Concrete Caveman - Feral
When it comes to grindcore and death metal, you can’t beat the classics. It is not rare for me to flip through the works of Carcass, Napalm Death, Terrorizer, and Repulsion on any given day, and definitely not a surprise when I roll through them all back-to-back. Something about that primordial soup of disgruntled d-beat, loosely borrowed thrash riffs, and the wanton speed and intensity barely held together creates a sound that is as irresistible as it is timeless.
Attempts to recreate this sound, however, often lead down a dangerous road of self-parody. Old School Death Metal as a subgenre is full of bands unable to look past their influences to harness the titans that inspire them and create something new. The result is a musical space often filled with trite and repetitive music that fails to live up to its parts. Concrete Caveman, however, is not one of those bands.
The self-proclaimed “primordial death punk” from Philadelphia harkens back to that sweet spot in time where Deviated Instinct was still shaping their sound and Morbid Angel hadn’t quite pieced together the keys to death metal just yet. Their debut album, Feral, is a ferocious attack of buzzsaw riffs marrying a disgruntled and diverse array of sounds from extreme music’s most formative days.
“Visual Masochist” kicks things off with a barrage of blasts and groove-induced breakdowns that would do Symphonies of Sickness-era Carcass proud, if they only squelched a little more. However it is the formative Florida sounds that truly guides Concrete Caveman’s endless grooves. “Death Spiral” begins with the kind of ambling groove that would do Obituary proud. Feral rarely stays one place for long however. “Intruder” is a fraught and feverish hardcore punk ripper that brings to mind the earliest days of Suicidal Tendencies long and illustrious careers.
Feral exists on a knife’s edge, wearing its influences on its sleeve but never giving way to idle mimicry. Aggressive and urgent, it weaves between death metal, grindcore, thrash metal, and hardcore punk to create a sound that is nostalgic but still all its own. For those, like me, who can’t let go of Horrified and Cause of Death, this is a must listen.
