Concrete Winds – Concrete Winds Review

Imagine you are a humble fellow toiling away in a cement factory. You help man the kiln when the prepared mix of various raw materials and gypsum are gathered. Your days are long and arduous, covering your body in an uncomfortable lacquer of sweat. Your joints ache, your muscles are sore and your eyes are beginning to go earlier than expected because of so much time glaring at the bright glow of the fiery mess before you. It’s a Friday and bells ring out for the shift change. You’re ready to get home, crack open a cold Hamm’s, and spin some of your favorite records even though we all know that, in reality, you’re going to pass out 25 minutes after sitting in your favorite recliner. Just as you’re collecting your lunch pail, however, a category five tornado touches down outside of the factory, rapidly shredding it to bits. Shrapnel explodes in your direction, slicing you into ribbons. As your few final breaths start to sputter out, a steel beam falls from the roof turning what remains of your meat bag existence into a fine beefy goo.

Hitting play on Concrete Winds’ self-titled third album will have much the same effect. It’s an explosion of chaotic destruction. Notes are flying like shredded cinder block intent on harming the listener. If you do happen to make it to your recliner and know you’ll only last for 25 minutes, that’s just fine because that’s exactly how long the album is. This storm doesn’t overstay its welcome but ensures that every bit of rain, lightning, thunder, and hail is whipped into a preposterous frenzy. There is no reprieve and there is no sanctuary to be found within these red walls.

It takes a grand total of about 10 seconds before you’ll be treated to back-to-back scribbling leads in opener “Permanent Dissonance.” It can be challenging to be sure, but there are roughly five more such whammy-abusing leads across the song’s two-and-a-half-minute runtime. Though to be fair, it’s tough to say what’s a lead and what’s a matter of simply adding noise to the din for the sake of chaos. The way the leads play off of one another, you’d think it’s two dudes in the studio facing each other and having a Kerry King pissing contest, but if you check the liner notes, you’ll find all guitars, bass and vocals are done by one man (with the exception of a few guest leads on three tracks). My theory is this P.J. fella gets black out drunk while recording, wakes up to listen to some of the recording and gets pissed off about whoever threw a crazy lead on his song, so he decides to rage record another one to fight it. Regardless of his approach, there’s no way this man has remained physically intact after recording three albums like this in five years.

Concrete Winds will fly by you as the entirety of it goes full-tilt from start-to-finish, making it difficult to suss out details on just a listen or two. As you settle in to return to this album repeatedly, which you definitely will do, subtle differentiators do emerge. “Daylight Amputation” opens with a meathead riff on speed. “Infernal Repeater” has a black metal undercurrent to its opening riff, crams blink-and-you’ll-miss-them tremolo notes into another one and a grooving breakdown part in the middle. “Subterranean Persuasion” utilizes a simpler hideous riff and is one of few songs that actually seems to have a modicum of open space before it bashes you over the head with a repeated riff that’s so perfectly timed it could be played by a Glockenspiel puppet smashing the guitar with a hammer. “Systematic Distortion” feels like a horror movie soundtrack where you’re viewing from the killer’s POV as they hunt down an entire summer camp, eviscerating them one by one in the most violent of ways. There’s even a guitar part that sounds like a laser version of a chainsaw revving up.

Everything about Concrete Winds is intended to be overwhelming and disorienting. It’s noisy as hell, dissonant, ridiculously heavy and faster than Noah Lyles. If you told me that they recorded the guitar by strapping a mic to it and throwing it into a hurricane, I’d be inclined to believe you. Basically, what I’m getting at is, you better believe this madness is going to be a on my year-end list!