The new leader of the French metal scene started this month their biggest headliner tour so far and without any surprises, plenty of shows are soldout. On this Monday 22 April, they stopped in Lille to confirm their new status, their reputation and kick our asses. As usual. We may hate getting our asses kicked by the French football team but not by Landmvrks…
To open this tour, Opus Live and Kingstar Music booked some great supports: Guilt Trip, Like Moth To Flames and The Devil Wears Prada as main support. The hardcore band opened the evening and we’ve been surprised to see how good their sound was compared to what opening acts often gets but also by the great response of the French crowd so early. Many years ago, we had the feeling it was hard to motivate the French crowd in the metal scene but it has changed a lot now. In January, we went to Paris to catch Architects and Bury Tomorrow shows: the crowd was on fire and already motivated for the first bands. Next to this hype and growing motivation, we sometimes have the opposite feeling in Belgium where the crowd seems a bit jaded. That being said, it was a best beginning than expected. Like Moth To Flames didn’t follow the hype but their short set let us have a look on the great merch available in the back and try the local beer (Pelican Red 50cl for 7€ was a good deal – in 2024). Just to make us ready for what we came for: Landmvrks and The Devil Wears Prada.
Obviously, we’re not speaking about this old funny movie but about the American band (this bad joke will never get old). We sew TDWP opening for Wage War in Antwerp in 2022 and even if they made a great job, we were a bit frustrated: with the quality of the last 2 albums, we expected a better show. Tonight, they confirmed us all our hopes and even further! Their set-list was mainly focused on their latest sick album “Color Decay” with 5 songs: Watchover, Salt, Sacrifice, Hallucinate and the little surprise Broken. When we interview the co-frontman Mike in 2022, he told us that we should wait until an headliner tour to hear this song live. Fortunately we haven’t to wait until then as we got it on this tour. And it was a very good idea as it was the highlight of the evening next to Chemical and Sacrifice that closed the set. During 40 minutes that felt like 10, TDWP played the best show we’ve seen from there in a decade.
Set-list: Watchtower, Danger: Wildman, Salt, Broken, Ritual, Reasons, Hallucinate, Outnumbered, Chemical, Sacrifice.
Thanks to TDWP, we are hot and ready to welcome the stars of the evening: Landmvrks. They don’t need introduction anymore. Since the release of their album “Lost In A Wave” late 2021, they became one of the best young acts in the metal scene nowadays. Not only they sound great in studio, they sound even better live and have built a strong reputation of delivering a powerful live show. In the last 3 years, we must have seen them like 10 times, in all the configurations possible: festivals like Jera On Air, opening arenas for Bring Me The Horizon, destroying classic venues with The Ghost Inside. The proof their rise: they play on this tour venue as big – or sometimes the same – as the Stick To Your Guns tour when they were opening act 1 year ago.
To open this show, Landmvrks played us their brand new single Creatures, first extract of an upcoming full-length album we hope to get later this year. This song is the perfect way to resume Landmvrks: some rap parts, some groovy fills, a powerful riff and a breakdown. We’ll always be surprised to see such a powerful performance coming from Flo: if you hear the band on Spotify and has never seen them live, you would imagine a stronger man, not a fit man like him. Like they say in French: “L’habit ne fait pas le moine”!
Mainly focused on the last album as usual but with a different order this time, the 5 boys from Marseille and around will play all their best songs without almost any breaks and the feeling the set was about 10 minutes instead of 1h. A proof the times flies when we have a good time. From the powerful Death and Say No Word to the softer Tired Of It All and Visage, including a few oldies like Scars and Blistering, we got a few surprises: the old Hollow that we don’t hear so often live but especially Suffocate played for the first time on tour. Finally! They used to play it an handful of times but on special occasions like their hometown shows when the singer of Chuck! No Captain Chuck! appears to play his part live. Tonight, Flo did everything but without any problems of course.The encore was short but intense with the 2 iconic Lost In A Wave and Self-Made Black Hole: if you had some energy left, you use all of it there.
In about 1h, Landmvrks confirmed all the good we thought about them: they’re the leader of the French modern core scene, they’re one of the best prospects in the international scene, they’re even better live than in studio and they still have a big potential. We’ve seen many bands for whom a tour of this size has been their highest level and never been able to go bigger (Landmvrks opened for some of these bands) but we saw tonight Landmvrks can reach even bigger levels. That’s what shocked us the most: 2024 might be the Landmvrks year but the best is yet to come!
Set-list: Creatures, Death, Blistering, Say No Word, Visage, Tired Of It All, Scars, Suffocate, Hollow, Rainfall, Lost In A Waves, Self-Made Black Hole.