It has been an extremely solid few years for extreme metal-influenced hardcore, with bands like Jesus Piece, Fuming Mouth, Like Rats and Genocide Pact delivering a slew of rowdy, mosh-oriented albums. Albany, New York’s Concrete occupy a similar sonic territory, infusing a heavy metallic hardcore sound with traces elements of death metal.
Concrete released their latest album, Free Us From Existence, in August, showing a large evolutionary leap from their last album, 2017’s Everything Ends Now. The Albany hardcore unit are moving away from a more traditional metallic hardcore sound to one more akin to the bands mentioned above—vocalist Lenny Fletcher has adopted lower, angrier vocals and there are blast beats aplenty.
It’s all exemplified on songs like “Starving Serpent,” which comes paired with a cinematic music video that enhances the violent feeling of Free Us From Existence. Check it out below.
“‘Starving Serpent’ is about coming to terms with what’s inside of you,” Concrete tell Decibel. “The aggressor and the victim are the same. The man in the chair is the inability to escape the pain and suffering that is also just as much a part of you.”
Free Us From Existence is out now.
