Then there's Ross Robinson's production. The cover art for the album is a scratchy thing in various shades of grey, much rougher than the art for their later albums, and you could say the same for the production job too. Robinson's production is primarily sympathetic to Dino Cazares' guitars and secondarily to Raymond Herrera's drum work. Vocalist Bell comes out of things less well; his tenor register in particular seems to suffer a certain lack of definition. (The liner notes leave me in some confusion over the bass parts, first claiming one Andy Romero was the bassist--the photo in the album shows a quartet--but then state Dino Cazares played bass on all tracks.)

All told, then, Concrete probably demonstrates more than anything that both parties involved, Robinson and Fear Factory, had better things ahead of them. Still, it makes for fascinating listening and gains some power from its relative compactness, with only four of the sixteen songs lasting over three minutes and only one of those lasting over four, plus a further three tracks that clock in under two minutes. Fans of Fear Factory in particular and the metal genre in general will almost certainly need to hear this.