### Landmine Marathon: Gallows

#### 15/11/11 || gk

Landmine Marathon are an American death metal band and “Gallows” is their 4th full length album after seven years of being together. The only reason this band came to my attention is because of the presence of vocalist Grace Perry who it’s often been said is one of the most extreme female singers around today.

The band play pretty basic death metal with hints of hardcore and before you think “deathcore” and move onto something else, I have to say that the band are mostly competent, occasionally very good and manage to stay away from most of the modern trappings of mixing death metal and hardcore sounds. Landmine Marathon manage to name check the entire pantheon of American and Swedish death metal bands while also throwing the occasional nod towards Bolt Thrower and it works for the most part. Opener “Three Snake Leaves” is a successful start to the album with a main riff that is pretty brutal and catchy at the same time and a tempo change in the middle that works really well. “Knife From My Sleeve” again benefits from a slow almost doom metal start with some tortured vocals from Perry and a cool lead guitar section before blasting its way towards the end. “Dead Horses” sounds like Harmony Corruption era Napalm Death before moving through a variety of moods while “Beaten and Left Blind” is a pretty good song with a strong hardcore influence in the riffing and “Gallows” ends with a strong Bolt Thrower influence in “Morbidity” which is probably the best song here.

Landmine Marathon isn’t exactly the second coming of anything and the music isn’t as extreme and heavy as it’s being made out to be or presented as. Still, the band benefit from the presence of two good guitarists in Dylan Thomas and Ryan Butler and an excellent drummer in Andy York who propels these songs along while also knowing exactly when to tone things down and slow the beat. Vocalist Grace Perry is effective but she reminds me more of someone like Walls of Jericho’s Candace Kucsulain albeit slightly better and she’s most effective while trading vocals with bass player Matt Martinez who has a pretty impressive growl.

“Gallows” is an enjoyable enough album. There’s nothing here that really blew me away and the music has as much in common with death metal as it does with bands like Pulling Teeth and Ringworm but it’s all over in less than 30 minutes and the band does manage to write a few very good songs. Overall, I’d say this is a band worth checking out for a short sharp blast but I doubt if “Gallows” will have any sort of lasting impact.

- Information
- Released: 2011
- Label: Prosthetic Records
- Website: Landmine Marathon MySpace
- Band
- Grace Perry: vocals
- Dylan Thomas: guitars
- Ryan Butler: guitars
- Matt Martinez: bass
- Andy York: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Three Snake Leaves
- 02. Cutting Flesh and Bone
- 03. Knife From My Sleeve
- 04. Liver and Lungs
- 05. Dead Horses
- 06. Cloaked in Red
- 07. Beaten and Left Behind
- 08. Morbidity