Review Summary: Legacy presents some mildly interesting ideas, but are rendered almost un-listenable by the godawful production.
The standards for metalcore have gotten obscenely low nowadays. Most bands can at least come up with one good song or two, but everything else is filler. Take Miss May I for example. Their album At Heart’s lead single “Hey Mister” was actually fairly decent, but can you remember any of the other songs off of that album? Same goes for Plagues from The Devil Wears Prada. Most people remember “HTML Rulez D00d” and “Hey John” but how did the rest of the album stand out? The problem is, it doesn’t.
The musical section on the album is average for the most part. The guitars, are all played in standard drop C tuning and are fairly mediocre, save for a few interesting riffs in
Fears,
Vices and
Intentions. The drums plod along mindlessly, serving only to provide the beat and the bass follow the guitars like sheep. That being said, they all play off of each other nicely and at least got my head bobbing at a few parts. The vocals are standard middle-range ‘brutal’ screams. They would be passable, but for some reason they felt the need to include cleans. Some bands can pull off the heavy approach with clean singing very well, but Legacy can’t. In this case they sound like they were thrown in at the last second and can often totally derail a song, although that’s not saying too much. The lyrics are laughable. I mean really,
”When did reality become so real?” and
”Shame is all you have to offer, don’t worry you’re not to blame”? That’s all you can offer, guys? The song titles themselves are also very cliché. Every song title is just ‘insert noun here’s. Look at the track listing if you don’t believe me.
1. Intentions
2. Disbeliefs
3. Blindfolds
4. Illusions
5. Burdens
6. Vices
7. Fears
8. Demons
9. Curses
10. Barriers
That’s deep, guys.
But my main problem is with the production.
With Peace In Mind could have had some really good moments, and the cleans could have been listenable but everything is shamefully muddled together and to make things worse, the cleans are
layered giving a cloudy feel to the song as you can rarely tell what’s even being said, or to what you’re supposed to be listening to. Godforbid when screams are added
on top of that.
With Peace In Mind could have been a lot better, but that isn’t to say it’s horrible. It’s a very generic-core album with cleans so horribly produced, you’ll be reminded of the quality from early Waking The Cadaver. I wouldn’t recommend even downloading the album. Just listening to it is the equivalent of being stopped on a road because of construction. You know what they’re trying to do and you know why they’re doing it, but ultimately you’re just waiting for it to be over to get on with your life.
