PRIMAL Scream today release XTRMNTR, newly mastered and expanded across double LP, CD and digitally – listen HERE. It’s the second album to be released from The Bunker Trilogy, a special collection housing three of Primal Scream’s most revered and experimental albums: Vanishing Point (listen here), XTRMNTR, out today, and Evil Heat, released on 30th October. Each album includes new mixes, unheard material and b-sides, plus new liner notes. An exclusive collection box set housing the trio of LPs, and 12” single ‘If They Move Kill Em’, is also available to pre-order. All formats are detailed HERE.
The Reckoning, a previously unreleased track which is now available on this new edition of XTRMNTR, was premiered exclusively on Lauren Laverne’s BBC Radio 6 Music show yesterday. Lauren was joined by Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie who shared insight into the process of remastering the song, which involved the lengthy task of tracking down the original masters.
XTRMNTR’s release comes as the band kicks off their UK headline tour of the same name, performing the classic album in its entirety. The first show took place earlier this week in Dundee, followed by the first of three nights at Glasgow’s Barrowland. The band then heads to NX, Newcastle (8th), Nottingham’s Rock City (9th), New Century Hall in Manchester (11th), Electric in Bristol (13th) before closing at London’s HERE at Outernet on 15th September. The tour meets huge demand for the band to perform XTRMNTR live in its entirety, following the 25th anniversary performance in 2025 at London’s Roundhouse, described by CLASH as “more prescient, urgent and needed than ever”. Final tickets are on sale here.
From 1997 through to 2002 Primal Scream released three albums – Vanishing Point, XTRMNTR and Evil Heat – signaling one of their most daring and influential periods. Originally recorded in the North London studio built by Andrew Innes and Bobby Gillespie, nicknamed ‘the bunker’, the albums pushed the boundaries of rock, electronica, dub, and industrial music in the way that only they could.
The journey from 1994’s Give Out But Don’t Give Up to Vanishing Point saw Primal Scream dismantle and reimagine the very concept of a rock band. Through a radically new creative approach, they stripped everything back to the group’s essential core: the songwriting partnership and musical direction of Bobby Gillespie and Andrew Innes.
Introducing The Bunker Trilogy for 2026, Primal Scream’s principal songwriter, vocalist and frontman Bobby Gillespie said:
“The albums constituting The Bunker Trilogy were the complete antithesis of everything that was going on in UK music in the 1990s. We were making uncompromising aggressive experimental pop and rock music with lyrics about psychic dislocation, addiction, alienation, depression, questioning our very existence and documenting the dark sleazy underbelly of UK youth culture. We were wary of New Labour and its neo-liberal trojan horse policies and we were prescient in our prediction of the resurgence of fascism, militarism and Imperialism to come in the 21st century. We were not ever ‘Brit Pop’ – we wanted to burn the flag, not wave it. Whilst the rest of the UK music and cultural scene fell in love with itself, convinced by their own genius, drowning in an orgy of narcissism and cocaine in a permanent self-aggrandizing state, we had had our times of utopian thinking at the beginning of the decade but were now full of disgust for ourselves and the world. Out of that self-reflecting mood came the albums Vanishing Point, XTMTR and Evil Heat. All recorded at our north London studio, The Bunker. We are quietly ecstatic that these albums have all been newly mastered complete with the necessary ‘B’ sides from the times and will once again be available on vinyl, CD and streaming platforms, as this is a body of work that we are very, very proud of.”
Originally released in July 1997, Vanishing Point reached #2 on the Official UK Album Chart and ranked fourth in NME’s Albums of the Year list. There have been few comeback singles more uncompromising than the album’s lead track, ‘Kowalski’, and few Top Ten hits stranger – the song debuted at #8 in the UK Singles Chart and was playlisted by BBC Radio 1. The accompanying video, scripted by Irvine Welsh, featured the band being summarily executed by supermodels Kate Moss and Devon Aoki. The song ‘Trainspotting’ also features prominently in Danny Boyle’s 1996 classic movie adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel of the same name. The album’s musicianship is at the highest level, welcoming Mani Mounfield to the studio for the first time playing bass on ‘Kowalski’, whilst Marco Nelson, the Memphis Horns, Pandit Dinesh, Augustus Pablo and Glen Matlock all added guest performances.
A prescient state of the nation address at street-level, XTRMNTR shot to #3 on the Official UK Album Chart on its release in 2000. The Bunker Trilogy edition of XTRMNTR brings together album B-sides and sought-after rarities in a single collection for the first time. Amongst them is Massive Attack’s remix of ‘Exterminator’, a newly mixed version of the ‘Accelerator’ B-side ‘When The Kingdom Comes’ featuring a 12-string guitar solo by Paul Weller, and two previously unreleased recordings: a cover of the garage-rock classic ‘I’m Five Years Ahead Of My Time’, and ‘The Reckoning’, both featuring drums by Can’s Jaki Liebezeit, with Kevin Shields playing guitar on ‘The Reckoning’.
Evil Heat, originally released in August 2002, is an album of abrupt tonal shifts; from the darkly psychedelic ‘Deep Hit of Morning Sun’ to the electroclash techno of ‘Miss Lucifer’, the album is an intense and unforgiving listening experience. This intensity is mirrored in the fanzine collage cover art by Julian House, with its firearms, skull and crossbones, gas mask and punks. Guests across the album include Jim Reid, of The Jesus and Mary Chain, who adds vocals to ‘Detroit’, Kate Moss, who sang on ‘Some Velvet Morning’, and a howling blues harmonica from Robert Plant. Evil Heat reached #9 on the Official UK Album Chart upon release and was described by the NME as “every single track demands repeated exploration and devotion.”
With each album newly mastered by Matt Colton at Metropolis Studios under the supervision of Bobby Gillespie and Andrew Innes, and featuring new mixes by producer Brendan Lynch, The Bunker Trilogy marks the definitive document of Primal Scream’s revolutionary sonic experiments over this vital five year period.
Primal Scream’s latest album, 2024’s Come Ahead, found Bobby Gillespie releasing some of the most personal songwriting of his band’s career. The album was rapturously received by fans and critics, with praise from CLASH, The Standard, MOJO, AnOther Magazine, Classic Pop and more. Outside of Primal Scream, Gillespie is at his most prolific creatively, his memoir Tenement Kid was selected as Rough Trade’s Book of the Year, and won the NME Award for Best Music Book. The band’s era-defining Screamadelica album celebrated its 30th anniversary with huge sold out gigs across the UK, including London’s Alexandra Palace. Gillespie teamed with Paul Weller writing lyrics for ‘Soul Wandering’ from album 66, and collaborated with Jehnny Beth in Paris writing and recording the Utopian Ashes album of duets. Bobby also recently collaborated with Yttling Jazz on new track Strange, with acid house duo Paranoid London on their song ‘People (Ah Yeah)’ and sang and co-wrote ‘Prisoner of Beauty’ with The Limiñanas. He also composed his first movie soundtrack for the cinematic release Five Hectares with French filmmaker Émilie Deleuze and sang on six new songs on the new Peter Perrett album, The Cleansing.
