He is Legend "91025" CD
[Tribunal]
Hmmm, this band seems a little unsure of what exactly they want to do with their music, resulting in a slightly jumbled mass of styles - some of which they excel at, and some of which they suck at. Thankfully it's more good than bad, but it's one of those situations where I can't help but constantly think about how much better it could be were they to cut the shit and just do what works for 'em. More specifically, they should be a heavy emo band that has tendencies towards a fairly respectable style of catchy/radio friendly emo that doesn't shun its metallic tinge. They should drop the chaotic dissonance and Swedish death metal riffs (or should I say the stolen Iron Maiden dual guitar harmonies), which thankfully they do seem to use sparingly, and I'm not sure they need to bother with screaming vocals either. Most of the lyrics are delivered via straight singing, and the dude's actually got a pretty strong voice most of the time, and really the screaming is okay, it just feels like a little too much sometimes. The bassist is fucking stellar, as proved by some of his over the top runs in "Martini", played with his fingers and everything... very nice. The bottom line though is that when the songwriting is streamlined and focuses on a somewhat typical mix of clean passages and heavier melodic chord progressions, these kids are pretty good songwriters. Sure, sometimes they drag things out too long or throw in too many changes, and occasionally a consistent track will wander to an out of place segment that really ought to have been omitted, but as a whole I like a lot of this. Yeah, the opening song ("Hip Hop: Anonymous") is basically nonsense and should've even be here, but hey, shit happens. Recording wise they're damn close to where they need to be, but I would beef up the drums and turn the damn vocals down. They barely pull it off with the vocals mixed so far out front, but thankfully the guitar and bass tones sound so great that I can live with it. The drums lack resonance and have a thin, triggered sort of rigidity, and that hurts as well. Not bad, though. Just clean it up. Visually this thing looks pretty damn good, with lots of high contrast images of industrial landscapes, a consistent color scheme, really crisp and compact type, etc. The song titles are really sarcastic, but the lyrics are basically personal issues and they're not that bad really, if not a little abstract. "And that's when the housewife said that someone's sleeping in my bed, And I raised my head high, You can't catch me, I'm beating the jury and her voice is in my head..." In the end, there are good songs and bad songs here, and some that fall right on the line. At their best I could see this band totally winning me over in the future just because I'm a total fucking sucker for a catchy song that's got some punch to it, and I think they could even make it work with the metal if they just ironed out some of the kinks. Good, not there yet, but good. I can appreciate a good chunk of it. (6/10)
Running time - 33:56, Tracks: 8
[Notable tracks: Suave, The Fool]
Tribunal Records - http://www.tribunalrecords.com

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