Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: He Is Legend
Label: Century Media
Release: 2007
Nomen est omen. Hmmm. They started out under names like The Uriah Omen and No One Wins in Stronghold. In the case of this quintet from North Carolina (their roots, to be precise, grew out in the little town of Wilmington) – He Is Legend – you really can’t make that claim without getting to know their music first. They’re stylistically impossible to pin down, yet you could easily stuff them into any drawer of the rock genre-classification system – from southern rock, grunge and metal to emo core. The influences running through their veins range from Melvins, Foo Fighters and Nirvana all the way to Neurosis. Music has no borders, so anything goes – from dissonance to sugary melodies. They’ve already put out three albums. Two of them for Century Media. With their new one, their second in just two years, Suck Out The Poison, He Is Legend have added another piece to the mosaic of complex stories that you could also describe as southern epics, or, as singer Schuylar Croom puts it, “weird, seductive and dangerous, but with a touch of sexiness”. It’s definitely a departure from the previous album, the debut I Am Hollywood, when they were off touring with contemporaries like Atreyu, Eighteen Visions and Every Time I Die, plus darlings of the American hardcore crowd, Norma Jean. The horizons this album opens up are wider. They’ve picked a path where nobody could shove them into hardcore, metalcore or screamo just because their musical textures are heavy and massive.
The album opens with the rock’n’roll opener ‘Dixie Wolf (The Seduction Of…)’, which shows some direct flirting with bands like Stone Temple Pilots on Core. Croom successfully cracks the grungy melancholy open with a piercing metalcore vocal that’s also capable of beautiful melodic singing. The guitars are uncompromising but can also soften up, so you feel right away that you could be completely hooked after the first listen. That’s not necessarily always a bad thing. It just points to a feel for music, and for commercial appeal too. ‘Attack Of The Dungeon Witch’ is a punk’n’roll continuation of the wild opening ride. And just like that, we’re at the first potential hit, the title track, ‘Suck Out the Poison’. Foo Fighters is the first association. The riffs are written like Dave Grohl was dictating them. The vocal line sounds similar too. Very catchy and groovy, I have to admit. The dissonant release from all that lightness comes in the very next moment. ‘Mushroom River’ serves up heavy guitars that, after the brutal minor-key opening, deftly unravel into a livelier, more optimistic chorus. The duality is schizophrenic and fascinating. Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The darkness is pierced by sunlight, which then sinks back into the dark. ‘Opening’ sobers you up with piano harmonies. The piano-and-drums instrumental then smashes into a thousand pieces with ‘China White II’, which tells a story of family estrangement, tragedies behind tightly closed doors, anxiety and pent-up rage, violence, the collapse of the family-values system – which these days is anything but an exception. Still, optimism mustn’t die out. ‘Serpent Sickness’ continues in a similar vein, tearing serenity apart with racing guitar colors, and once again we feel the razor-sharp duality of Croom’s vocal nature – a furrowed throat that he tears into without hesitation with guttural accents and melodic wandering in a direction that’s not exactly the most logical or expected. No point talking about logic and predictability. There’s definitely no shortage of suspense moments. ‘Electronic Throat’ is a tribute to the tradition of southern metal and the southern tradition of rock soloing. After that it’s time only for a stampede and firing off carefree riffs. ‘Stampede’ delivers that musically. The weight is in the lyrics, which hint again at shattered ideals and an unhappy childhood. ‘The Widow Of Magnolia’, which follows, is already almost superfluous, and the album starts dragging right here. ‘The Pot Belied Goddess’ thins out the record in a poppy way with a pinch of melancholy and sharp sentiment that doesn’t give up the distorted guitars. For dreaminess and funkadelic minimalism, though, there’s a musical interlude just under two minutes long, the intermezzo ‘Cannonball Hands (The Tomato Parade)’, which, with its repetitive riding of three notes, boosts the shockwave of the song ‘Cannonball Hands (The Tomato Parade)’ even more, developing the previously heard phrase into a rhythmically scattered, intense, metal-ish duel of guitar riffs against rock vocals that are once again Weiland-esque, erotic and appealing, but also already heard and, sadly, not particularly original. The formulaic feel we sense can only wrap itself up. The song ‘(((Louds’ doesn’t really surprise in a way. You can get associations with Fred Durst and almost forced anger that blares out under the pressure of the guys wanting to repeat the already-heard just one time too many, in a direction that, for me at least, doesn’t go down too well. Even the vocal insert of Laura Sweeney’s soulful, dirt-black female voice doesn’t surprise, adding the cherry on top where every extra gram of clutter might already be too much. And the grams have turned into kilograms and tons…
Truth be told, Suck Out the Poison left a double aftertaste on the tongue – bitterness and satisfaction. Satisfaction that the guitars are finally rhythmic and full again. The sound is definitely top-notch, and a listener who doesn’t listen critically to the lyrics but only values the musical effect, the backdrop, will undoubtedly rate this positively. The bitterness comes from He Is Legend wanting to do simply too much with some of the songs. To charm at any cost and show everything they’re capable of. To be linear within one song and convince us you’re not a boring imitator of the ones we often call the Greats. The ones we call Musicians. At times they actually violate not just their own music but, through the ear canals, the listener too, who after reading the intro expects almost pioneering stuff and gets only a distillate of what’s been heard before. A construct of emptiness that sounds fascinatingly full. Kind of like the century we live in, don’t you think?
Lineup
Steve Bache – drums
Schuylar Croom – vocals
Adam Tanbouz – lead guitar
Matt Williams – bass
McKenzie Bell – rhythm guitar
Production
Steve Evetts
Tracklist
1. Dixie Wolf (The Seduction Of…)
2. Attack Of The Witch
3. Suck Out The Poison
4. Mushroom River
5. Opening
6. China White II
7. Serpent Sickness
8. Electronic Throat
9. Stampede
10. The Window Of Magnolia
11. The Pot Belied Goddess
12. Cannonball Hands (The Tomato Parade)
13. Goldie’s Torn Locks
14. (((Louds
ALBUM LENGTH: 57:08
