Landmines – Commerce And Marx

Had some trouble with Commerce And Marx, and I’m still more than a little ambivalent towards it. On one hand, there’s plenty of solid songwriting and youthful, catchy progressions here. Dudes can play. It’s apparently their second full-length, and they’re clearly fully enmeshed in the sound they want. But the stuff they’re playing – melodicore couched somewhere between mildly blasé street punk and most of 1996’sEpitaph roster – is littered with the bodies of bands more timely and, frankly, a little bit more memorable than them.

That’s not to say there aren’t some good moments here, bordering on great. The album is scattered with anthemic choruses and singalongs – the closing bridge in “Before We Fade” and much of the fury of“Three Little Pigs” show a kinship with Strike Anywhere’s stuff. Despite the oddly titled “Hooker Piss”, it sounds like they’re at least a reasonably topical band – the lyrics to “Black Tide” are clearly about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. (And yet again, I’d like to say that it’s really too bad that Paper + Plastick has apparently decided not to include lyric inserts with any of their CD releases.) But mostly there’s the sinking feeling that I’ve heard this stuff before, nearly to death, and that there’s just not quite enough to set Landmines apart from the pack.

So it’s a mixed bag that ultimately makes Commerce And Marx little more than background music with an occasional snag of memorability. They’re passable. They’re at least somewhat political. They’re reminiscent of bands like Pennywise, Antillectual, Static Thought and, again, Strike Anywhere. The recording quality’s excellent. They’d be amazing in a live setting. But on record, and without a lyric sheet (which is frequently half the battle for this listener) there’s just not enough to differentiate. They’re great at what they do, but what they’re doing comes across as frequently formulaic and predictable. The energy’s there, and apparently the passion, but the songs themselves simply sound like covers of a record that’s been out for years.