Concrete Sun – Eight
Concrete Sun is a Novi Sad line-up founded in 2007, which after four years of work realized its debut album "Sky is High", initially as a free download, and with the agility of Miner records it was reissued in cd format, at the end of 2012.
The debut album presented them as a convincing musician, immersed in the American heavy, grunge and stoner sound of the first half of the nineties. Enumerating the impact would take time, but let’s just mention the ones immediately noticeable like Down or Alice In Chains. There are also those less noticeable that can be discerned only after a few auditions (for example, the occasional mild echoes of Exodus from the "Force of Habbit" phase or the overtone of the Testament from the same period, primarily in singing). It is obvious that Concrete Sun positioned its sound completely at that time in the mentioned time period, but what is a plus for them is that the material recorded on the album "Sky Is High" sounds fresh and not too retro. This year's new album, "Eight", brings a partially more modern sound, less stoner vibe, the songs are faster, the riffs are shorter and more sharp. The production seems to be a shade more successful (and the debut album had a good production for the local conditions), and the bass guitar got more space in the arrangements. Strahinja Cerovina has once again confirmed himself as one of the better singers on the Serbian heavy scene and he sovereignly leads the band through eight new songs (hence the title of the album). The order of the songs is not the happiest, so after five songs that make up the most impressive part of the material, there are two slower, longer and bulkier "Vagabound's Dream" and "Silver Tear" (a video was recorded for the latter). Thus, the second half of the album is subordinated in quality to the first, and for the very end, an unnecessary stylistic rehearsal on the theme of the southern sound "Chained Up & Out Of Blues" was left. The cover was performed very pompously and all congratulations to Miner records, which enabled them a booklet of twenty pages with lyrics of all the songs and accompanying, solidly ambitious, photos. On the other hand, I was unable to decipher the connection between the album title and the photo on the front of the cover, as well as the connection between the photo on the back of the cover and the rest of the booklet. It is a band with obvious potential, which has two noticed albums behind it and the support of the record label, and which on the next album might finally turn things around in its favor and achieve more noticeable success outside the heavy scene. This is supported by the current video for the song "The Galley", and the announcement of the release of the album on vinyl, but it would help the band to continue to remove the influence of other bands from their sound and continue to form its original author's stamp. In the end, "Eight" will surely, despite some objections, find its place on the lists of the best metal albums of this year released in the former Yugoslavia, but perhaps it would be more important than that to be presented as much as possible at live performances.
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