CONCRETE

I thought I would never listen to this kind of music, but being too curious, I had to check this out, since I read a heavy pummeling of Whourkr's other album. The band consists of two musicians, and the style is called Tech/Extreme Prog Metal. I'm not familiar with that genre, but trust that the classification is right. The 14 tracks on Concrete are shortish, but intertwine quite easily, and form a whole of 38 minutes.

It's easy to understand why people don't like this kind of music, because it lacks all the rhythmic and harmonic cohesion of rock music and humdrum prog. It's too demanding and very aggressive, but when I got over the first three or four minutes, I tracked some sense in this concept. Personally I see this music related to contemporary art electronic music, although Whourkr uses traditional rock instruments to create their sounds, whereas art music composers tend to fetch their sounds from elsewhere, especially in musique concrète. I wonder if the title of this album is an homage to that music style?

The music on this album is mostly very brutal noise, but there are other kinds of music as well, like the suddenly appearing soft piano and vocal passages. I even heard a trifle of Shostakovich. I must admit I'm very intrigued, because I could easily listen to this music as a part of a contemporary music concert in a concert hall, but it's a bit too much to like this as popular music from a CD.