(Our Norway-based contributor Chile has brought us (and you) the following review of a new album by Finland’s Concrete Icon, released just a few days ago by Memento Mori and Fetzner Death Records.)
Maybe the dark, frozen months of the winter and the thick snow cover are not the right time to think about the reasons why there are not more death metal records played at the summer barbecue parties, but here we are. Just think about it, for it’s a perfect match-up, as both deal in the themes of dead, carved tissue, the eternal flames of charred remains, and the cult-like gatherings around those very flames, and are normally a whole lot of fun. Now only to find the place where this idea falls on fertile ground.
Not trying very hard, we turn our gaze towards Finland, the most metal-bands-per-capita country in the world, so if you’re going to make it anywhere, you can make it there with these random ideas. Anyway, all of this brings us today to our guests in Concrete Icon who, you might have guessed it, are indeed Finnish and play death metal. As if the spiky band logo and the toxic, green-tinged cover art by the brilliant Juanjo Castellano didn’t inform you enough, then heed these words. It really is a death metal album through and through.
Releasing albums like clockwork every six years, Concrete Icon return this time around with a complete new lineup save for the main man/guitarist/vocalist Jaakko Peltonen aka Jake. He remains the main songwriter, but fresh blood exerts its influence on the sound and the new album named Voracious Streams explores places beyond their previous releases. Diving head-first even deeper into the fetid pit of old school sliminess, the new album is a much thicker, dirtier, and an all-around more devastating affair.
Streams start overflowing as soon as the roaring opener “Slaves of Hostile Dominion” (surprisingly, not a song about Amazon’s workforce) brakes the confines with a deliciously nasty riff, pinching some tasty harmonics along the way. The deep, rumbling sound of the guitars is a welcome sight as it gives this album much-needed gravity, so much of it, in fact, that the “Aberrant Tyranny” threatens to pull us across the event horizon into the oblivion formed by the tyrannical forces lying beyond.
“Storm of Denouncement” proudly denounces any attempt at slowing down and rips out an almost Gojira style riff among all the other maniacal ideas on display, while “Rats in the Matrix”, also released as a video, continues with the versatility we have come to expect, as the song seems to be standing at the crossroads of various influences by both American and European schools of death metal.
The other half of the album starts even more unrelentingly as it ramps up the riffing and takes a bit more stripped-down approach of the so-called meat and potatoes death metal (hold the potatoes) all the way through the simpler, yet effectively crushing, “Inferior Almighty” and “From Wisdom to Carnage”.
Bringing us closer to the end of this 33 minute long affair, “Chaos Cult” introduces some welcome Immolation-like ornamental stylings coupled with the frenzied riffing which spills over abundantly into the final, title track of the album. “Voracious Streams” thus ends on a high note with masterful riffs coming at us like an ever-flowing stream from dying heaven to living hell.
In the end, if this world somehow manages not to fall hard on its head soon, we will be blasting Voracious Streams throughout the year, barbecue parties or not. Standing on the shoulders of the giants known mostly as Morbid Angel, there are certainly plenty of reminders throughout the album of where the band’s allegiance lies. Lucky for us, Concrete Icon also boasts an opulent Finnish character of its own and it shines forth in every single one of these eight songs. Here’s hoping we don’t have to wait another six years for the next album.
Voracious Streams is out now on CD released by Memento Mori and on cassette and digital formats courtesy of Fetzner Death Records.
https://concreteicon.bandcamp.com/album/voracious-streams
https://www.facebook.com/concreteicon/
http://www.memento-mori.es/home.php
https://fetznerdeathrecords.bandcamp.com/album/concrete-icon-voracious-streams-mc
https://fetznerdeathrecords.de/Concrete-Icon-Voracious-Streams-MC
https://www.facebook.com/concreteicon