Concrete Winds Subject Listeners To "Noise Trepanation" (Early Track Stream + Interview)

Concrete Winds is the most vicious band in death metal right now. I don’t say that lightly; even on their parent label, Sepulchral Voice Records, there are some astonishingly violent bands such as Sijjin (whose upcoming debut album Sumerian Promises is a real doozy) and the mighty Degial. The brutal intensity and nerve-wracking cacophony that Concrete Winds create with their hyper-speed take on the genre is unmatched, with their music forming a whirlwind of unhinged hatred and promises of destruction.

As undeniably great as the debut Concrete Winds album, Primitive Force, was the new opus Nerve Butcherer that comes out on November 26th is even better. Even more menacing and off-kilter, it recalls the most insane sections from albums like The Magus or of the ferocity of Divus de Mortuus without repeating them. The fact that the band at this level of speed and aggression does not descend into grindcore noise is in and of itself impressive; the fact that the band’s sparsely-used anxious slow sections hold up as well as the fast ones is even moreso. Nerve Butcherer lives up to its name and is not an album for the faint of heart. Click below to listen to an exclusive premiere of “Noise Trepanation” and read on for an interview with the band.

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As with Primitive Force, Nerve Butcherer is over in a flash and has a playtime under 27 minutes. Are short, bludgeoning albums a conscious and intentional facet of Concrete Winds? Is playtime a deeper consideration?

No consideration, the playtime is as it should be in our opinion and the same goes for Primitive Force. The material is made to be a maelstrom of annihilation. This is the way we do it and thus a CW-album within the length scale of the “considered normal”-duration is highly unlikely. Panic, force and speed, aggressive noise torment.

Despite the overall velocity driving your music, slower sections—such as the midpoint of “Chromium Jaws”—provide a respite from the pulverizing speed that most of the album has. How do you decide when a slower part is needed? Is it possible to have a truly good album in this style in the absence of any of these points of contrast that you write in?

When less fast parts occur they always happen in the moment of assembling/rehearsal sessions. That is, not calculated but rather organic and from a mutual way of construction between us as a unit.

Today’s song premiere is for “Noise Trepanation” which has a couple of memorable and untraditional hooks in the forms of discordant leads and drum/guitar breaks. How much work goes into making intense songs like this one into tracks that stick in the head and stand out from each other?

We are never actively concerned about making songs either stand out or stick in the head, mainly the objective is one of ear canal destruction, discomfort and to aggravate the listener. If this is the result however of course it is welcome. Even more if it leaves the consumer with a bitter aftertaste and claustrophobic disgust.

Nerve Butcherer was recorded with a different engineer than Primitive Force. Was there anything you were seeking to improve upon sonically moving album to album, or was the move driven by other considerations?

The one aim was solely focused on making the material itself increasingly unpleasant and distasteful, the engineering/sound was already stellar (on Primitive Force) in our opinion, and the initial plan was to go back to Germany and record as we did with Primitive Force. However the travel restrictions and overall uncertainty when it came to setting plans during the past year(s), effectively put us in a position to reconsider our initial scheme. We decided for The Dustward Studio, situated closer to our locations and it proved to be a great way to go.

Every collective album between the two of you has pushed boundaries more and more since [Vorum’s] Poisoned Void. Is there an endpoint to the extremity you can force into the world, or a point where you can no longer top yourselves? What happens if you ever reach it?

Quit, hopefully.

P.J. joined the ferociously violent Degial a few years before the chaotic birth of Concrete Winds. Was that experience at all essential to learning to craft the atmosphere that Concrete Winds has, or influential on any aspect of the band at all?

We have all known each other for a long time and had a very strong instant connection in several fields from the start. For years we have worked closely resulting in a majority of members on occasion filling in for another in the opposite band and the other way around.

We are however different entities standing on our respective fundaments.

Where did the artwork for Nerve Butcherer come from? How important is artwork, presentation, and aesthetic to Concrete Winds?

From our paroxysmal hands and minds fully submerged in the recording itself. Its purpose is to look as it sounds, in no way could we have anything that is easy or pleasing on/for the eyes. It is finished if simultaneously fixating at the graphics and pummelling the ears with the audio induces nausea.

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Nerve Butcherer releases November 26th via Sepulchral Voice Records