Caskets Open – Concrete Realms of Pain (2020) / 78%

Balls to the Wall

The Finnish trio are really starting to become an entity of their own with their fourth album. While But You Rule, their 2010 debut album lacked most of the punk elements of their later efforts, their followups explored those areas in more details. Concrete Realms of Pain, their debut on Poland’s Nine Records (known for releasing quality doom such as Acolytes of Moros, Mansion or Lucifer’s Fall) shows the band moving forward in both experience and songwriting chops.

The main element that I always found displeasing in their albums is the inability to truly make a cohesive album while still incorporating the plethora of elements they want to include. I do believe this fourth full length is more successful at achieving that particular balance of sounds but it's still bothering me.

Ah yes, to give some context as to what the band plays... Imagine a long table where Glenn Danzig meets up with Albert Witchfinder who’s obviously tired of talking about trad doom and the newly revived corpse of Peter Steele who’s hiding a copy of his Playgirl issue to remember the good old times. At the other side of the table, Chandler argues with both Wino and Reagers about what Vitus era was the best. There’s also a bunch of punks in the parking lot drinking beer and not caring about the meeting.

Compared to their debut or To Serve the Collapse, the traditional doom elements are downplayed here. The opener “Four Shrines” almost cleanses the whole album from slow doom once its six minutes duration is done but there’s some other slower moments such as the first half of “White Animal”. It’s a good and bad way to start the album as it doesn’t exactly shows us the way the whole album will treat us. While still first and foremost a doom band, the whole thing is faster and streamlined for the most part. It also has the best production of their career, it’s as muscular as the bloke on the artwork.

This is how you do a tough guy album to be honest. Riffs solid as bricks, a booming unhinged bass and fast, thundering drums. No useless posturing, breakdowns or unnecessary elements, just balls of steel on the wall of the dungeon/gym. Speaking of manly, the vocals of Ketola are gruff and with the right amount of venomous might to bridge the chasm between doom and punk, mixing Danzig and trad Finn doom. Caskets Open aren’t a subtle band at all, voluntarily on the nose is their main objective and it works fine.

Overall, this is an enjoyable slab of beefy doom/punk but once again, the lack of cohesiveness and the tendency to want to do too much blurs the results. Sometimes, it’s better to focus on making one thing extremely well. I tried a mac and cheese pizza the other day and while I love both on their own, it wasn’t a resounding success mixed together.

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