Concrete Youth spent years playing metallic hardcore, youth crew, crossover and beatdown, where writing often meant finding a way to make the next part hit harder. This time, they kept throwing things away.
“Sometimes the simplest riff survived while the more technical ideas disappeared”. The technical stuff got written, played, argued about and binned. What was left was usually the part you could hum.
Concrete Youth are from South Jakarta and they did not sit down planning to start another hardcore band. It happened because four people who had spent years in different corners of hardcore wanted to write the kind of songs they had always loved but never had a place to put.
The lineup comes out of Final Attack, ZIP, Feel The Burn, Decomposing Normality, Stand Clear and Rage of Despair. Wide spread, and the band do not really care about the labels. “Hardcore as a community always came before subgenres.”
What they wanted was a band where melody and urgency could sit together without one being a compromise.
“Not melody for the sake of accessibility, but because that’s where our influences naturally met.” Both sides of that are real. Youth of Today, Chain of Strength, Turning Point, Insted and Uniform Choice on one hand. Countless hours with pop punk and punk rock records from Drive-Thru, Fat Wreck Chords and Epitaph on the other. That mix is why the band exists. “For years we played aggressive music. Eventually, we wanted to write songs that still carried urgency but left room for emotion instead of relying on constant breakdowns.”
It comes out as pop punk infused melodic hardcore, fast and uplifting, the kind of thing that keeps you going when you are already knackered. Widi does not sing over the top of the band, he sings inside it, which was the plan.
“The vocals changed too. Instead of trying to overpower the music, they became another part of the songs.” The words are about wear and tear, not victory laps. “Every effort made seems to take longer now / I’m not the one I used to be, I’m getting older now.” On “Don’t Kill the Vibe” it gets more direct: “I’d rather be with my friends today / The pressure’s on, but we stay afloat.” Then everyone shouts “Let’s fucking go!” and it takes off again. Give this one a proper listen, especially if you like your hardcore with a big chorus in it.
The writing itself is where the real change happened. In the old bands the question was always heaviness. Here it was whether a part carried a feeling. Taking parts out turned out to be harder than adding them, which is not what anyone tells you after ten years of writing breakdowns.
Not everyone in Jakarta got it straight away. “Some people from the old scene immediately understood what we were trying to do. Others expected another metallic hardcore band because they knew our previous projects. That’s completely fine. Hardcore has always allowed people to evolve without abandoning where they came from.”
The three tracks all arrived differently. The intro was an accident, one of the earliest ideas they had, and once everyone put their own parts on it, it stopped sounding like any of their old bands. That one became the blueprint. The second song was the opposite: rewritten over and over, never finished, and the version that made it onto the promo ended up much simpler than the drafts before it. The third became the emotional centre. By the time they tracked it they finally knew what the band was meant to sound like. “Recording this promo wasn’t about perfection. It was about capturing the energy of six people discovering a new sound and a new identity together.”
Firdi plays guitar, Indra Chino bass, Iksan drums, Widi does vocals. Firdi Nodiansyah produced it, tracked guitars and bass at The Boiler Room Studio in Bogor, drums at Plug Studio in Cibubur, vocals at Zlax Studio in Jakarta, then mixed and mastered the lot back at The Boiler Room. Artwork by Randy. It went up on 27 June 2026, and it is on Bandcamp and YouTube now, with more streaming platforms coming.
The Jakarta scene is not the one-note thing people abroad assume it is, and the band would rather set that straight. “When people outside Indonesia talk about hardcore here, they often reduce it to one sound. The reality is much broader.” Youth crew, metallic hardcore, beatdown, crust, punk and straight edge bands all share stages. Small DIY shows happen almost every weekend. Independent promoters do most of the work and labels keep documenting local releases, mostly on cassette and digital. New bands turn up constantly, older ones stay active instead of disappearing after one demo.
“That’s probably the healthiest part of the scene. Nobody waits for permission.” People book their own tours, print their own shirts, put out their own records, build friendships with scenes across Southeast Asia and further out. “Hardcore here survives because people keep doing the work instead of waiting for industry attention.” And it has stopped being a Jakarta story. Compared to a decade ago, almost every city in Indonesia has its own scene now, with local bands, promoters and crowds building it themselves.
They handed over a list, so here it is: No Excuse, Bleach to Death, Modern Guns, Remuk, Ezalor, Expect, Firestorm, xDefiancex, Defy, Sacred Power and Tigerwork.
“They all represent different corners of the scene, but each one has something worth hearing. Some have already started reaching listeners outside Indonesia, and hopefully many more will.” They also say do not sleep on Hellcanon Records, who keep putting out some of the best new heavy and metallic hardcore from Indonesia. If that is your thing, go dig through the catalogue.
Three songs in 2026 was a choice, and the reasoning is refreshingly unbothered. “Hardcore has never needed to follow the release strategies of the mainstream music industry.” Loads of their favourite records started as demos. A handful of songs can introduce a band more honestly than a full-length made too early. They would rather people sat with these, played shows, and let the band grow in front of actual crowds before anyone starts talking about something bigger.
The debut EP is already being worked on for early 2027, and if it goes to plan it lands as a three-way job: vinyl through a German label, CD through a UK label, cassette through an Indonesian one. Names once it is all confirmed.
“Three songs are enough to say who we are.”
🔔 IDIOTEQ is ad-free, independent, and runs on one person’s time. If you want it to stay that way: DONATE via PayPal or SUPPORT via Patreon.
NEW: IDIOTEQ Explore 🗺️ Browse 15+ years of our archive by city, country, and style. Find artists on the world map or trace related sounds through the styles map.
Stay connected via Newsletter · Instagram · Facebook · X (Twitter) · Threads · Bluesky · Messenger · WhatsApp.
