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Review: Concrete Icon - Rancid Harmony
Concrete Icon
www.facebook.com/concreteicon
Rancid Harmony

Label: Klabautermann Records
Year released: 2019
Duration: 41:39
Tracks: 8
Genre: Death Metal

Rating:
4/5


Review online: January 5, 2020
Reviewed by: Luxi Lahtinen
Readers' Rating
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Rated 4/5 (80%) (6 Votes)
Review

Flag bearers of Finnish Death Metal Concrete Icon are a familiar sight on the site. I reviewed their previous releases Perennial Anguish and Through Agonizing Past, and while I enjoyed them, I wasn't sure if they had the potential to do great things or not. Now, I can safely say that with their sophomore album, Rancid Harmony, they have proven that they do.

The album bursts out of the gate with the hammering title track, which stabs its heaviness and brutality into your skull like a sacrificial dagger. This, along with the following track "Vulgar Atrocious", shows the band working in a vein similar to Morbid Angel's Gateways, but more melodic. The album has faster cuts like "Thoughts That Condemn" and "Dreadful Consciousness", but it's the more experimental cuts like the epic "A Scar for Every Dream", the Demigod-meets-Carcass harmonies of "Stain of Imperfection", and the progressive, Immolation-esque "Meaningless Am I" where the band is at its most individual and compelling. The best track on here, however, is the album closer "To Kill a Swan", which starts off with a lovely acoustic and electric guitar harmony that creeps like poison in your veins before becoming a tour de force of hatred and heaviness the likes of which I haven't really heard since Morbid Angel's "God of Emptiness".

This is easily the best release the band has done to date, and it made me go from having reservations about future releases to unreservedly anticipating them. Recommended, and may they impress me even more with the next one.

More about Concrete Icon...
Review: Perennial Anguish (reviewed by Luxi Lahtinen)
Review: Reign of Anguish MMXXII (reviewed by Luxi Lahtinen)
Review: Through Agonizing Past (reviewed by Luxi Lahtinen)
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