Review by Dillon Crader
UK based Landscapes is releasing their second full-length record, Modern Earth through Pure Noise Records. I was excited to get my hands on this album frankly due to all of the great hardcore bands that Pure Noise has been signing lately, though it wasn’t anything I expected.
It has been quite a long time since I have listened to a melodic hardcore album in full, but the way that Modern Earth was structured made this album a great listen. Every single song fit right where it was placed, which is something that I feel many bands tend to forget about. Landscapes did a tremendous job with the tracklisting.
That being said however, I honestly wasn’t too impressed with most of the vocal work on Modern Earth. Much of the vocal work just tends to make the album blend in with other melodic hardcore bands. Though Landscapes do earn some props for trying something drastically different on the song “Remorser.” The song is very dark and seems to have sort of a weird industrial feeling that totally works. While I personally was not a fan of the vocals on the track, the fact that Landscapes tried something very different was great.
The guitar work on the album is very enjoyable, despite the somewhat generic vocals. The sweet, beautiful sounding melodies and leads throughout Modern Earth are what really carries the whole album forward. Guitar-wise, one of the strongest tracks on the album is “Transient,” with a strong guitar tone and breakdown along with the lead guitar work adding quite a bit of feeling to the song. The breakdown on “Transient” was something I was not expecting to hear and really made for a great ending to the song.
The track that stood out the most to me on Modern Earth was “Radiance”. About halfway through the album, Landscapes start to build things up with interlude track “Aurora” that leads into “Radiance,” which is heavy with guitar feedback and drums. The song builds slowly, adding vocals and building intensity. Then, the breakdown finally hits and the washed out sound of the symbols and the palm-muted guitar creates one of the coolest breakdowns I have heard in a long while.
Overall, I expected a bit more from Modern Earth. However, if you are a fan of bands like Being As An Ocean, The Ghost Inside and Counterparts, you will love this album. Though this isn’t my favorite album of 2016, I am interested to see what Landscapes will do with their future. This band hasn’t quite mastered a sound to call their own, and once they do, it’ll be a hit. I will definitely be on the look out for Landscapes’ future releases.
Rating: 2.5/5
Listen to “Radiance”
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