Certain music demands to be listened to. The other music requires to be practiced. Heavy Machine Gun is a song by Leather Laces, and it falls into the still more rare category of music that literally forces you to submit to it, that makes listening to it an exercise in endurance and, eventually, transcendence.
This is not a song in any normal way. It is an audio military drill, a two-and-a-half-minute training drill that does away with all the comfort zones that music usually offers. No voice to follow, no catchy tunes to latch onto, no verse-chorus to hang your hat on. Rather, the song is something much more basic and bare-faced, pure rhythmic warfare, the song is Heavy Machine Gun.
It is simply genius. The introductory sounds of parading soldiers are not merely indications of an atmosphere, but also the terms of engagement. That instant, all the bent guitars, the violent synths, the specific Linn Drum beats all join the irresistible force of progression that is more about watching a natural force of nature than music.
The thing that impresses me most about this song is its boldness in its vision. At a time when musicians tend to make safe bets, watering down the intensity in order to broaden their audience, Leather Laces have produced something that is not compromised on any level. The four-man band-_SHOE, DripString, Chokeloop, and Slughair-operate as one entity where each of them has their own expertise that they bring to the table to come up with something that is beyond what they bring to it.
The success of the song "Heavy Machine Gun" lies in the fact that it realizes that sometimes the most poignant artistic statement is not about comfort and familiarity; it is about facing the listeners with something really new and really difficult. It is experimental music that does not seem like an intellectual exercise but more of a visceral need, a sound that had to be created whether people were prepared or not.
