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The Saddest Landscape - You Will Not Survive [Album]

Panic Records

by Stephen Smith, November 13th, 2010 and has been Read 2942 times.
Last Edited by: Jack Stovin November 14th, 2010.

The Saddest Landscape are a heavy, extreme, post punk band that I had never heard of prior to listening to their debut album You Will Not Survive. I must say though, that The Saddest Landscape have struck a chord with me. They are from the upper U.S. East Coast and You Will Not Survive is The Saddest Landscape’s third full length release. Their music is brutal, difficult and confrontational and they carry a certain mystique about them along with their brutality.

The Saddest Landscapes sound is frightening, original, and engaging. Some might categorize The Saddest Landscape in the shallow Screamo genre but these guys are way above this silly classification. I’ve been listening to You Will Not Survive trying to do housework all day. Let me tell you, it made me angry and hyped up, but the musicianship and song-writing is so impressive here that I wound up utterly distracted. I couldn’t get my work done, and I had to switch over to something else a little less distracting.

Their music is brutal, difficult and confrontational

The energy level is sky high. The brutal atonal guitar work and the thundering drums will rip your face off and the screaming, hellish, scorching vocals are top notch. The Saddest Landscape remind me of the unforgiving, yet inventive work of At the Drive In and Mars Volta and they carry the high energy level of Black Flag at their strangest and heaviest. Combine that with the attitude of Steve Albini’s band Big Black and you have one lethal combination. This album is deafening, filled with anger, grooves, and out of this world guitar work.

The first half of the album is straight forward brutality, but there are touches of melody such as in ‘Eternity Is Lost on the Dying,’ which remind me at times of the gothic hardcore of TSOL. The last half of this disc carries more melody that the first, although the vibe is still brutal as all get out. Check out ‘Imperfect but Ours’ and ‘From All of Those…” These are a few of my favorites towards the end of You Will Not Survive.

What I really love about The Saddest Landscape is their ability to play music so frightening it will make you want to come to Jesus yet they still offer enough hooks and melody to keep you coming back for more. I highly recommend The Saddest Landscape’s You Will Not Survive. It is going to be released soon on Panic Records so keep your ears and eyes peeled.

You will love this. Trust me.