Hatebreed – The Concrete Confessional (Album Review)

Shave your head and put your black hoodie on.  In case you haven’t heard Hatebreed has a new record coming out.  Their seventh to be precise.  The Concrete Confessional may just be their heaviest yet.

A former band mate of mine once told me anytime Hatebreed played Wisconsin they had to do so under a fake name because the cops were after one of their members for some sort of Hatebreed type of crime.  While I always assumed this was just a meathead metalhead myth, I enjoy the idea of some Podunk Wisconsin P.D. pulling up Hatebreed tour dates on his iPhone just daring them to make a stop in Oshkosh.  At the very least LaCrosse.  My mind raced back to images of cops chasing the Duke boys down a dusty road, only to have to slam on their brakes as they crossed county lines while Bo and his cousin Luke poke their heads out of the General Lee staring back at the cops a few yards away.  Powerless on the wrong side of the county line.  Imagine the Hatebreed van racing the Wisconsin Highway Patrol to the Minnesota state line.

So new record.  With The Concrete Professional, the band sounds very thrash and maybe a little less hardcore.  And Jamey Jasta sounds, well, pissed.  More pissed than usual.  The opening track “A.D.” takes harkens Slayer‘s “Angel Of Death”.  This is the third record with the same lineup of Jamey Jasta, Chris Beattie, Wayne Lozinak, Matt Byrne and Frank Novinec.  The result is a meatier more classic thrash sound.  You get no further than “Looking Down The Barrel of Today” (I wasn’t worth the bullets) when you realize this is at the very least a different Hatebreed.  NO SLEEP!  NO REST!  Maybe even a better Hatebreed.

Standout tracks:  “A.D.”, “Looking Down The Barrell of Today”,  “Something’s Off” and “Slaughtered in Their Dreams”.  And if I had to pick a weak track it would be “The Apex Within”.  But this is a record that makes it hard to pick your least favorite.  If you don’t like this record then you don’t like heavy music.

Buy this record. The Concrete Confessional comes out May 13th.

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