Anyone who has ever put an ear to the Finnish buddies of Concrete Winds knows that things are not done in a gentle way. The latest, untitled album is no exception: the duo smashes everything they come across. I spoke to the band about their mercilessly violent music and the thoughts that go along with it; the result is nicely in line with their musical antics: short but vitriolic.
Hi and thanks for sharing some time with me and to go through the past and present of Concrete Winds. Let’s dive right in the new album. Listening to ‘Concrete Winds’ made me realise that you managed to push even more boundaries in terms of wild musical violence. Yet, it still remains remarkably musical. Chaotic, but still with a good dose of distinct riffs. Was this a preconceived plan? And how did you work yourself to this result?
The intent is to always push our own boundaries and that of extreme metal. This is the essence and the foundation of aggressive noise torment and something that will always be there when we’re are creating this maelstrom of musical violence.
If you’d listen to all three Concrete Winds albums in succession, one of the most striking things you’d notice is the impressive musical consistency. It can be said that ‘Primitive Force’ is a bit more Death Metal based and your latest effort has a far sharper and meaner edge to it. What would you yourself say sets the three albums apart most from each other?
As mentioned in the first question, we’re always pushing the extremes and each release is supposed to be more violent, more nauseating, more disturbing. If you’re listening to all three in succession, everything is supposed to escalate for each release to the brink of total destruction.
With this mild musical evolution, on a primal level you do get more connected to the “bestial” or “war” metal scenes. The wild and ferocious character has quite a bit in common with acts like Conqueror or Angelcorpse. As far as I know, you never seemed to care about musical classification, but do you agree with that commonly used statement?
In our own opinion Concrete Winds is DEATH METAL.
One of the key-elements to success for Concrete Winds is not only the splendid riffing, but also your sense for measuring things excellently. The album is chaotic, but still in control. There is a lot of dynamics throughout all three albums. The production is raw, but clear enough to prevent it from sounding muddy. And, maybe most importantly: with clocking in well under half an hour, the albums are nice and short. Is this all experience, plain good luck or a well thought-out plan?
This is the way we write music. Length doesn’t matter as long as everything fits together and the records as a whole feels like a detonation of primitive incomprehensible force.
Throughout ‘Concrete Winds’ there is also some evident traces of other styles and influences. Some spare moments of droning doomy riffs and harsh noise do give the album some extra versatility. Other than the obvious Death Metal classics, what would you mention as your main sources of inspiration?
Besides the musical influences, we take inspiration from anything that sounds disturbing, hard, metallic, chaotic and the likes of these. It can be anything from industrial machines with militant like rhythms at work to huge bow thrusters or whatever comes to mind that brings up that feeling that hell and destruction awaits.
While it has been a part of the Concrete Winds formula, your appreciation for Morbid Angel is more evident on this new album than ever before. Can you tell us how important that band is to your sound?
Morbid Angel is a band that we’ve been listening to since the really early days of our musical career, so that sound is basically in our bone marrow. Their influence and presence will always be there, but nowadays that sound is not something that we are at least consciously aiming for.
And, while we’re at it, a bit more of a personal question. Morbid Angel fans are quite divided when it comes to picking their favourite album from their discography. You could make a case for a few of their records being their best. So, what is yours?
Impossible to give a definitive answer to this one. Basically their whole catalogue is a master class in death metal. But besides their classic ones, their later records, for example ‘Formulas Fatal to the Flesh’, ‘Gateways of Annihilation’ and ‘Heretic’ are extremely great death metal records that should absolutely not be disregarded in our opinion.
Although Concrete Winds more or less came out of the blue, it is no secret that you started from the ashes of Vorum. What was the exact idea to do after Vorum folded? And now you are a few years on, how do you look back at how it all came out?
To keep going forward and constructing something even worse. We were already making new material when Vorum folded and we had the basic foundation laid out for what was to come and when you look at the outcome, it ended up just the way is was meant to be. Would at the same time be difficult to imagine Primitive Force material as Vorum, it would for sure have sounded very different and another result from what it is. In a way it was supposed to be what later became Concrete Winds.
Besides Vorum the both of you have quite a modest musical resume, although it also includes the great Degial. Yet, Concrete Winds sounds as solid and professional as possible within the framework of the genre. How would you describe your development as a musician and a band? What do you regard as your main achievements?
It’s been a aggressive, iron fisted development totally focused on getting more solid and chaotic and still keep that ecstatic, raw and rabid mental state that emerged in the beginning. And to still have this mindset is probably the main achievement.
In these digital times in which people tend to jump from one YouTube channel to the other without properly diving in to what is really on offer, it is easy to just look up how a Concrete Winds show looks like. But, I am curious to know from you: how would you describe your live action?
A claustrophobic audial implosion and a straight forward scolding to the face. A berating.
Continuing on the subject a bit, with the help of Mika Heinonen on live guitar you have been playing a lot in the last couple of months. Although officially being “only” a duo, has bringing Concrete Winds to the stage always been a goal? Are there any highlights to mention from the past gigs and festivals?
The focus was always to perform it live and to do so with a second guitarist which Mika has executed perfectly. The tour of 2023 when opening for Watain and Bølzer was great and made us into even more of a machine with conducting that amount of gigs.
We have been into similar territories already, but I’d like to zoom out with you a little. From a spectators view like mine it seems these times are more friendly to bands such as your own. More and more bands go for the unbridled and chaotic approach, not just that hand full that can be found on the Nuclear War Now! Productions roster. How do you, as an insider, look at such a development? And how and where do you place Concrete Winds in the grand scheme of things?
More people embracing the chaotic and extreme is a preferable development and is probably inevitable, as more and more (at least seemingly some groups of) people seem to be looking for something along those lines even more. We have our own grand scheme that we are always developing and it will only get more nauseating and demented and if this approach reaches out to more minds, we appreciate that.
That was it from my side for now, thanks a lot for your insights and thoughts. I’m leaving the closing words to you…
Aggressive Noise Torment
