Review Summary: Comfort metalcore with a few surprising twists
Modern metalcore, in my opinion, is the closest thing there is to musical comfort food. You know exactly what you’re getting every time, and while it might not remarkable, might not be something that blows you away every time, it hits that sweet spot that makes you grin a mile wide nonetheless. France’s LANDMVRKS have occupied that sort of niche, despite me never listening to a full album before this one. What singles I’ve heard from them have been wonderfully inoffensive, with enough manic riff energy to keep me intrigued. So, when I turned on their fourth LP,
The Darkest Place I’ve Ever Been, I had perfectly safe expectations. What I ended up finding was both a bit surprising and a little bit disappointing.
Well, actually, let me rein that back in for a second. A large majority of
Darkest Place is exactly what you would expect from modern metalcore, perfectly decent with plenty of energy and some pretty solid riffage that will keep any core-lovers engaged throughout the runtime. Lead vocalist Florent Salfati is a hell of a frontman, alternating between gritty cleans and some utterly absurd growls and gutturals. “Sulfur” is probably one of the best showcases of what LANDMVRKS can do on this album when they fully commit to being a purely metalcore act, complete with that wonderfully anthemic chorus that’ll make crowds pump their fists and sing along with all of their hearts, and that delicious breakdown at the end which, again, doesn’t exactly do anything new, but is executed so wonderfully that you don’t really care.
And then, Salfati starts rapping, and it all goes downhill. Look, I don’t know French, and I’m sure the lyrics are perfectly fine, but all I could think of when I was listening to the opening rap of “Creature” or the entirety of the short rap interlude “Sombre 16” was “this sounds
way too lyrical miracle-y.” It’s present on way too many songs on this album, and kills the momentum every time. I don’t usually like to throw this term around, but it truly does feel like something that was designed to garner TikTok attention in one way or another, the flow at times feels identical to some TikTok rappers I’ve seen (Connor Price’s Spin the Globe series leaps to mind, for those chronically online users like me who actually dove down that rabbit hole).
It's a shame too, when you consider the moments where this album truly shines and does genuinely refreshing things to tweak the formula. The intro self-titled track explodes into a blast beat-ridden snarl-fest that genuinely flirts with black metal for a half-second. Not even the cheesy “Check check!” callout can unseat its momentum as Salfati shows off every inch of his vocal range, both harsh and clean (though it’s here I should mention that his attempts at distorted clean vocals will take some growing on you). “La Valse Du Temps” uses the band’s native French for a spellbinding opening, and provides what should be the template for how the band should progress their sound rather than the rapping. And “Requiem” brings back the heavy for a crushing penultimate track, allowing “Funeral” to gently shut the album’s doors.
Overall,
The Darkest Place I’ve Ever Been sits at a strange three-way crossroads. For most of its runtime, it is exactly what most modern metalcore is: pure, inoffensive musical comfort food. And yet, it also simultaneously shows what LANDMVRKS should and shouldn’t be doing. It’s not divided enough to be a full-on identity crisis, but it gets close. Thankfully, for the most part, it’s a fun jam through and through. Just make sure to keep the rapping to a minimum on LP 5, please.
