Review of Landmine Marathon - Wounded

Synopsis:

Nondescript but competently noisy, sightly blackened hardcore/grind/thrash for fans that really miss Uphill Battle.

Review:

For those of you that play any sort of team sport such as soccer or football, remember when your coaches told you mental mistakes were okay so long as you did them going at 100% giving all of your effort? Well, Arizona’s Landmine Marathon sort of do that.

Fronted by the venomous Grace Perry, who to her and the band’s credit, has the most poisonous female screech I’ve heard since Hiretsukan’s Michelle Profitt, Landmine Marathon thrash and stagger through nine relentless tracks of under-produced but aggressive metal. More brutal, scathing and chaotic than Light This City’s At The Gates inspired tones though not as obviously hardcore and burly as Bloodlined Calligraphy or as simply well done as Hiretsukan, the band’s erstwhile death/thrash/grind is appropriately caustic and seems to denounce any sort of ‘core’ values, but quite frankly, above and beyond the high octane pace and Perry’s seething rants, musically, Landmine Marathon are forgetful song-wise and seem unaware of pacing, dynamics or memorability. As musicians, I can’t fault Landmine Marathon, nor can I fault the intensity and desire, but at some point, the music has to stick and rely on more than sheer in your face ‘Fucking LISTEN TO ME!” pressure, which is what I gleaned during Wounded’s assault.

However, the overall effort is commendable, as the band’s quoted classic Earache era influenced (Bolt Thrower, Entombed, At The Gates, Morbid Angel, etc) sound is often tangible (i.e “25th Hour”, “Thunder Blasted Bodies”, “Time Movement”) and delivered with a sense of tight Converge-ish urgency and dissonance, but once the album is over, I can’t recall a single riff or moment and thus, can’t wholly recommend this album to folks deciding what to spend their hard earned cash on, with so many other choices out there. I'm surprised also that the normally artistically intellectual and more genre pushing Level Plane would release something this simplistically barbaric.

That being said, like the vacuous blonde cheerleader you nailed in highschool, this is worth a quick, violent sweaty romp with, but you won’t ever call her again, though I will wonder what she is up to in three years.

Release Details

Landmine Marathon

Wounded

Comments

Related