‘When the fruits of labor have been drained, to the bone, devotion hangs on, swaying from the rope’ (Devotion)

As his track record of solo projects exploring the more saturnine recesses of post-punk bears testament to, Reuben Sawyer likes to work alone.  Primary Instinct is the second full-length of his current project, Human Trophy.

Fuzz drenched rhythm guitar fuels the metallic-tinged death rock that revels in its own viscous desolation.  The gloom is pierced by the bracingly dissonant lead guitar as it weaves its entrancing, melancholic spell.  Meanwhile, the fluid, deftly understated rhythm section delivers a limber, driving momentum and, perhaps, a more warmly organic underpinning than the icily mechanical beats of 2021’s debut, Corpse Dream.

Sawyer’s darkly resonant, baritone vocals emerge as an unwavering monochrome incantation, skilfully accented with flourishes of gothic theatre, saturated in despair.  Bleakly lyrical meditations on isolation and mortality are draped in the spectral imagery of faith and myth.  The funereal atmosphere is evoked with particular intensity by the hauntingly contagious Tears Of Eros, the sombre discordance of The Cabin, and the hypnotically coiling Bright Like Perspex.