ALBUM REVIEW: The Concrete Confessional – Hatebreed

The hardcore genre would be a very different beast if some 20 years ago HATEBREED hadn’t released the ever excellent and spectacularly brutal Satisfaction Is The Death Of Desire. With that debut, the Connecticut quintet not only set in motion the creation of an entire new genre and the subsequent birth of an entire sub-culture, but the album represented a new age in simplistic yet aggressive heavy music.

Five more albums on from that point and you’d be hard pressed to find any signs of exhaustion or fatigue within the veteran’s career. Instead quite the opposite, as the band prove with a blistering amount of gusto on their newest addition to their back catalogue, The Concrete Confessional.

Immediately kicking off with A.D, its clear that the band are as refined and finely tuned as they’ve ever been. The speedy riffs are reminiscent of the earlier and far more feral material, but instead of the shoddy production of old, its been spruced up and it shows. This is a heavy album, even by HATEBREED standards, with tracks like Dissonance, Walking The Knife and Seven Enemies each displaying a seething anger that helps elevate each track.

Taking far more notes from the more underground hardcore genres like Slam and Beatdown, the total commanding control that they have over the genre does nothing but bolster their legacy of dominance. The lyrical work of Jamey Jasta is also noteworthy, with excellent lyrics being spat with his trademark gruff delivery.

With the tempo and pacing on the album being firmly and permanently set at 150 miles per hour, the album feels over almost as quick as it begins. The breakneck speed is relentless and can lead to a pretty big ‘is that it?’ when final track Serve Your Masters ends in an abrupt (albeit heavy) nature. This is certainly something that is easily looked over however and judging from the strength of the entire album, safe to say it’ll immediately be on repeat.

At the end of the day, what is there really left to say about HATEBREED? Sure, their sound has hardly deviated from the original blueprint over their years, and those looking for something with even the tiniest bit of finesse will be at a complete loss here, but the bottom line is that The Concrete Confessional is a stone cold monster of an album that hits harder than pretty much anything released this year.

Rating: 9/10

The Concrete Confessional is set for release on May 13th via Nuclear Blast Records. 

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