LANDMVRKS headline at the Hawthorne Theater, September 30th, 2025
I left the Hawthorne Theatre the night of Sunday, September 30th feeling like I should brush up on my French. LANDMVRKS latest album, The Darkest Place I’ve Ever Been, has been on steady rotation in my listening since its release earlier this year. In it, vocalist Florent Salfati’s lyricism flows effortlessly from English to French and back to English again, and as much as I’d read along to the foreign language lyrics, and (with the help of some deductive reasoning and a vague recollection of 7 years of French study) deciphered the lyrics, hearing them live on Sunday still hit different. I found myself wishing I could sing along to the French parts, but as soon as the lyrics switched to English, all of us in the crowd joined in, chanting the chorus with Salfati.
One wouldn’t need to understand French, or even English, however, in order to understand LANDMVRKS and enjoy their show. Music, of course, is its own language — one that LANDMVRKS is certainly fluent in. Not even the last minute cancellation of Novelists, LANDMVRKS’ fellow French metalcore support act who got delayed at the Canada-US border, could stifle the energy in the room at Hawthorne. The remaining two support acts, Resolve, another metalcore act also from France, and Atlanta’s nu-metal band Silly Goose equally pulled their weight making up for Novelists’ absence as well, bringing a contagious energy that fully infected the room before LANDMVRKS took the stage.
This tour is Resolve’s first tour in the US and their excitement was palpable. The band got fans who arrived early head banging. Based on the crowd reception to their first time in Portland, I’m guessing this won’t be the last time we’ll be seeing them, either. Jackson Foster, Silly Goose’s vocalist, also showed his support by sporting a Resolve tee when his band entered the stage afterward.
Silly Goose says their name is what they’re about and their performance proved just that. They’re “all about having fun” and really are just a bunch of silly geese. In silly goose fashion, Foster made headlines earlier this year after being arrested on a trespassing charge while performing a pop-up show at a gas station parking lot after their Lollapalooza set. The shirts with his mugshot from that arrest with “FREE SILLY GOOSE” on back were proudly displayed for sale at their merch booth at the show. During their set, Foster went out into the crowd a handful of times and danced around on stage like, you guessed it, a silly goose. His jumps, however, were more in line with that of a monkey.
LANDMVRKS entered the stage after Silly Goose with the high energy anthem “Creature”, the second track from their latest album, The Darkest Place I’ve Ever Been. They followed that with “Death” from 2021’s Lost In The Waves. Prior to their third song, “Blistering” from their 2018 album Fantasy, vocalist Salfati called for crowd surfers and was not disappointed. The flow of bodies throughout ”Blistering” was endless, so much so that two extra security ran to the front to lend a helping hand. There wasn’t much of a break in the surfing the rest of the night, either, other than maybe during the just-over-a-minute rap-heavy beat “Sombre 16” and the stripped down intro to “Suffocate”, which Salfati played solo on stage before being joined by the rest of the band after the first chorus.
After ending their official set with “Rainfall” from Lost In The Waves, Salfati returned to the stage with a can of spray paint and canvas propped on an easel, where he spray painted the LANDMVRKS “V” emblem, graffiti-style and signed it. The band returned to the stage afterward for the encore, which consisted of “Blood Red” and “Requiem” from The Darkest Place I’ve Ever Been. This tour was the first time the latter was ever played live, according to Salfati. LANDMVRKS ended their first headline show in Portland with “Self-Made Black Hole”, bringing Resolve’s vocalist Anthony Diliberto on stage to sing with Salfati. The song featured vocals from Diliberto on the deluxe version of Lost In The Waves. Salfati put a hand on Diliberto’s shoulder as they sang and screamed together and the connection between the two friends could be felt in the room. LANDMVRKS’ decision to bring his fellow French colleagues on his US headliner was clearly intentional, and Resolve’s place on the bill for their first US tour was well-deserved. The addition of Diliberto on vocals for the final song made for a powerful ending to the evening.
Though I was bummed Novelists couldn’t make this show, especially considering Portland missed out on hearing Novelists’ song “Heretic” that features Salfati on vocals, LANDMVRKS’ still did not disappoint and wowed Portland on their first headliner in the city (and only second performance ever — the first being as an opening act for Miss May I in 2022). Novelists, in their Instagram post, promised to make it up to Portland as well, so maybe that means we’ll be seeing them shortly.
