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Concrete Icon, formed in 2007, had already released a couple of demos, one EP and one split (with Virginia-based Death Metallers The Seventh Gate), so it was about time that the band's debut full-length album be recorded.

In a way, Concrete Icon reminds me of another, disbanded Death/Doom Metal outfit called God Forsaken, especially the times when the band's excellent debut album, Dismal Gleams of Desolation, was released on French Adipocere Records back in 1992. Concrete Icon's doomy and sludge-ish Death Metal is also kind of stripped-down; it's more blood-soaked and hence heavier than the burial shroud of Jesus of Nazareth and it's got something borrowed from the uncrowned US goat worshippers Incantation and something stolen from another defunct Finnish underground Death Metal act, Cartilage. Those are the three names that crossed my mind when listening to Perennial Anguish. This album definitely differs positively from many other current Finnish Death Metal releases, with a nice focus on the yesteryears of the Death Metal scene. I found Perennial Anguish surprisingly refreshing and relatively intricate, the kind of album that almost screams to be heard.