Shaven Primates Rage Against the Machine on "Kill The Algorithm"

Shaven Primates formed in Oxford, UK in 2017, a five-piece band whose sound sits at an unusual crossroads, moody and atmospheric one moment, aggressive and punk-leaning the next, tied together by synths that swing between throwback and current-sounding. Frontman Mark Elphinstone had walked away from music completely for nearly two decades before he started the project, and he’s been open that it began as a way to work through some real personal wreckage rather than as a career move, a starting point that still colors how the band writes today. Their catalog runs from 2021 debut single and album “Child of Dirt” through the EP “Birds Aren’t Real” and 2024’s three-track “Chasing The Dragon,” each one building on the band’s central interest in fear, anger, and anxiety as material worth confronting head-on rather than avoiding. Their reference points range widely too, touchstones like The Velvet Underground, Kate Bush, Tool, Prodigy, Yes, The Clash, David Bowie, Porcupine Tree, and Pink Floyd all factor into the mix somewhere, giving the band a lot of room to shift styles from song to song without losing their own identity underneath it.

Kill The Algorithm

“Kill The Algorithm” pushes the band further into hard rock and punk than their earlier work, still carrying traces of art rock, and it’s their most confrontational release to date, four tracks built around anxiety and the desire for control, or the loss of it. “Saviour” opens things cautiously, holding back just long enough to make you wonder where it’s headed, before the whole band arrives at once and the track properly announces itself. The guitar tone throughout has a swirling, trippy quality that pulls hard from 90s alternative rock, closer to Placebo, Nine Inch Nails, or A Perfect Circle than any single genre, with real grunge and thrash metal grit worked into the mix. A steady, pulsing bassline and driving drums give it forward motion, while the push and pull between jagged, dark-toned guitar riffs and a much lighter vocal on top keeps the track from settling into one mood for long. Lyrically, it’s about the instinct to look outward, to other people or outside forces, for a fix to problems that are really internal.

“Pioneer Way” follows with a jolt of late-70s punk energy that owes a real debt to the Sex Pistols, apparently sparked by guitarist Tom’s frustration watching people plant flags on lamp posts and roundabouts, a small, almost silly irritation blown up into something loud and pointed. Bouncy drums and quick, detailed guitar flickers keep the track moving at a good clip, rolling percussion and a genuinely committed vocal performance giving the whole thing a catchy, wound-up energy that never lets up. “Feed” takes aim at online figures who exploit young men’s insecurities, specifically the idea that you have to act or look a certain way just to get someone interested in you, and the song’s structure has real range to match that subject: a hard-charging opening gives way to a quieter middle stretch, thin bass and chiming guitar with a soft vocal sitting on top, before the whole thing rebuilds into a forceful close. It’s a genuinely dynamic four minutes rather than one flat mood held the whole way through.

The EP closes on its title track, “Kill The Algorithm,” which works on two levels at once. Within the song itself, it takes direct aim at social media algorithms and the way they keep pushing young minds toward more and more extreme material over time, questioning what a digital environment built to reinforce propaganda and manipulation is actually doing to people. Radiohead, David Bowie, and Joy Division all feel like real presences in the sound here, and the arrangement itself moves between tighter, more intricate verses and bigger, more anthemic choruses, landing somewhere between prog ambition and punk directness. But the track, and really the EP as a whole, doubles as a broader statement too, an argument that music made by real people carrying real feeling still does something no AI-generated substitute can fake. The band isn’t subtle about drawing that line, and given how much algorithmically assembled content has flooded music recently, it’s a stance worth making loudly.