Live Review: LANDMVRKS - Electric Brixton, London 16/05/2024
Providing the ultimate crash course in metalcore, LANDMVRKS hosted the sweatiest and wildest gig thus far in 2024.
LANDMVRKS’ Creature Tour invited Mancunian heavy heads Guilt Trip and American hardcore idols Like Moths To Flames and The Devil Wears Prada to one of South London’s greatest live music venues, Electric Brixton. The hefty lineup, that seems like the ultimate American dream, proved to make for a seamless European-American metalcore finesse.
Guilt Trip initiated the anarchy of the night with flourishing breakdowns and the screamo vocals of headman Jay Valentine. Valentine stormed the stage with a wild energy and eagerness, and outpoured his excitement onto the crowd with encouragement to mosh and start walls of death. With an already packed room of metalheads, Guilt Trip were faced with a matched enthusiasm from immediate crowd surfers and nonstop mosh pits. Valentine’s restless stage presence interweaved with the musical expertise of his bandmates made for the perfect introduction to a night of pure metalcore mania.
The Creature Tour left little room to breathe between the intense energies of each performer. Like Moths To Flames perfectly matched the energy that Guilt Trip brought to the night and, whilst the audio levels of Chris Roetter’s vocals could have been higher, their immediate energy and hearty call and responses called for a continuation of the crowd’s staple metalcore antics. Fans clambered atop one another and threw themselves together into an increasingly sweaty bundle of bodies. Against Roman Garcia’s ravenous drumming and Zach Pishney and Cody Cavanaugh’s searing guitars, Roetter led Like Moths To Flames into the heart of Electric Brixton, into a frenzy of chaos and moshing mayhem.
The Devil Wears Prada ignited this frenzy twofold. Their beloved American metalcore anthems ricocheted off of the walls of Electric Brixton, igniting something raw within the crowd. A flurry of headbangers and a handful of bold crowdkillers entered the pit to rival the mosh pits of the two previous openers. The synergy between crowd and performers of this stage was electric and The Devil Wears Prada could easily have been thought to have been the headliners themselves! (No offence, LANDMVRKS.) With their lead singer, Mike Hranica, jumping on guitar himself and their rhythm guitarist, Jeremy DePoyster, wandering amongst the crowd at one point, the band preached chaos. As one fan put it, “the difference between a good metalcore band and a great one is so slim and The Devil Wears Prada sits comfortably in that section.”
LANDMVRKS were a treat, as expected, and set Electric Brixton alight with their powerful fusion of English and French lyricism. With the crowd surfing and moshing at its peak, the pit overflowed with a male centric heaviness. However, this by all means did not take away from the pure adoration between artist and audience. The entirety of Electric Brixton felt alive and interconnected through LANDMVRKS’ stellar setlist and through the energy of their musical performance. Frontman Florent Salfati demonstrated the magnificent new acoustic electric Fender guitar for one of the band’s tamer tracks, momentarily pausing the madness for a moment of musical appreciation. LANDMVRKS’ Creature Tour not only hyped fans for their next album, but brought together a collection of metalcore’s best and beloved to lose themselves in the art of moshing and crowd killing.
Guilt Trip are excited to announce that they will be attending this year’s Download Festival in Donington Park, for which tickets are available here, and will be expeditioning across Europe and Australia later this year. Like Moths To Flames will also take the trek to Australia this August. And, The Devil Wears Prada have recently announced their Europe and UK headline tour in 2025, with tickets on sale now. If you missed LANDMVRKS on the Creature Tour, you can catch them later this year as they support Beartooth’s headline tour with Polaris across the UK and Europe, available here.
Words by Erin Hill
Photography by Charis Lydia Bagioki // https://www.instagram.com/photosby_focus/
