Leather Laces' most recent release, "Heavy Machine Gun; the second single from the band, is an instrumental blitzkrieg, tight, brutal, and intentionally overwhelming. It's not meant to entertain, it's meant to engage, like a live-fire drill for the senses. The track itself boils in at just over two minutes, and doesn't overstay its welcome, but it explodes, levels the brush, and leaves a trail of smoke. "Heavy Machine Gun," leather laces don't demand your attention; they feel the click as they settle into place.
It's the marching soldier samples that lay the ground for the track, grounding this almost-disciplined chaos. You are marching in time, whether you want to or not. When those soldiers come back in at the end, you realize you've been involved in a mission from the start. But what cuts to the bone is the physicality of it. Leather Laces boil it all down to the essentials, sound and impact. The aftermath is less a song than an experience, a brief but intense campaign that does not back down.
The sound of a heavy machine gun suggests it was designed in a war room, not a studio. Here, distorted electric guitars slash through the air like rotor blades, aggressive synths pop from a can in rapid bullets, and the programmed-to-death Linn Drum never stops digging into your shoulder blade. It's an aural shock, but one that's meticulously calculated. Every sound has intent: every note, a command.
"Heavy Machine Gun" is a Leather Lace working together as one unit. Every member has a role to play in creating the track's character, as opposed to the way a song is passed around in a more conventional band, running like it might through a military unit. And there's genuinely something bracingly unorthodox in how they do it aggressively, almost combative in its refusal to play the same old game.
0 Comments