He Is Legend – Heavy Fruit Record Label: Tragic Hero Release Date: August 19 2014 I’ve never been the kind of critic, reviewer, or whatever you wish to call me, that likes to compare two bands/artists to each other. Well, I do occasionally, but not their music directly. I’ll compare bands’ careers, or just specific aspects to their sounds, but not the bands themselves. The reason I bring this up is simple, and let me ask you, the reader, a question (that you don’t need to answer aloud, because I won’t hear your answer, thanks to this being the internet). Have you ever listened to a band and weren’t all that into the group, for one reason or another, but then listened to a similar band and thought Band B was much more successful in their execution of whatever sound Band A was going for? I try not to compare bands directly, but sometimes it happens, especially when you find a band that just does a particular style of music better than another one. For me, there’s a perfect case of that, but I will say express a bit of a disclaimer. Being that people get upset over others’ opinions, usually ones that differ from their own, it’s not that I dislike the band I’ll be talking about, but I just didn’t particularly care for the record of theirs I’ll be talking about. With that being said, earlier this year, Australian psych-rock/post-hardcore band Closure In Moscow released sophomore LP, Pink Lemonade. I was pretty excited for this record, because I loved their debut, First Temple. I even pre-ordered it on iTunes and I was really excited to hear it. I did get an advanced stream of the LP, but I only listened to it once and waited until the album came out. Well, I was severely disappointed, because the album wasn’t very good, honestly. That’s coming from just one man’s opinion, but I found the same severely disappointing and boring. It wasn’t boring in terms of lacking energy, but it wasn’t anything interesting. The album was just a hodge-podge of ideas, seeing which ones stuck to the wall. It was so off the wall, and so chaotic that I had a hard time really getting into it. The album didn’t know what it wanted to be. Was it a post-hardcore LP, a pop LP, or a psych-rock LP? The album itself didn’t even know. Some songs specifically were great, but as a whole, the record just felt lacking and underwhelming. Not to mention, the record was an hour long, and records with very long running times can either be really good or painful to listen to. And after a handful of listens, Pink Lemonade really fell to the wayside, as some records do. A few months later, I got an email from Tragic Hero Records themselves with a chance to review the new LP, Heavy Fruit, from hard-rock/psych-rock/stoner-rock/post-hardcore band He Is Legend. I’ve always wanted to listen to this band, but never got around to it. I was definitely interested to hear their new LP, so this would be a perfect change to listen to them. I wasn’t too sure of what they sounded like, so I did some research, and like Closure In Moscow, they were a mix of a lot of different genres. That made me much more curious to listen to the LP. I’ve had it for the last few weeks, but I’ve only begun to listen to it, mainly because I wanted to wait until the album came out to really talk about and get into the record. Now that I’ve heard it a handful of times, here’s where my comparison comes in. See, Pink Lemonade by Closure In Moscow is a record that had good intentions. In theory, it sounded interesting, and to some degree, it kinda was. It kept me on my feet, and it’s a record that had some interesting ideas. The problem is, not all of the ideas were all that good, and it was so inconsistent, I really had a hard time enjoying it as a cohesive unit. Where Closure In Moscow failed, He Is Legend really succeed. Both albums are very similar: they’re psych-rock/post-hardcore records that are about an hour long and feature really zany album titles (both about food, coincidentally) and song titles. He Is Legend may be slightly different for having a more hard-rock sound to them, and if anything, that makes them a bit more interesting. Sure, Closure In Moscow did also have a funk/R&B aspect in their sound, but I felt as though they didn’t utilize it enough. He Is Legend really does utilize their hard-rock influence, by having many aggressive and really memorable guitar riffs running through many songs. I’m going to pretend that Heavy Fruit is my favorite LP of the year, or anything like that, but it’s still really damn good. The album does manage to stay consistent, but not overly consistent, meaning that each song sounds exactly the same. There are plenty of memorable moments throughout the LP, such as opening track, “No Visitors,” “Be Easy,” “Spout Mouth,” and a few others. Everything on here is quite unique, and definitely worth at least one listen. The only problem, however, and my biggest problem with the LP, is its length. Even with Pink Lemonade, one of many problems I had with it was the length, and thankfully, Heavy Fruit is good enough to where nothing on the record itself really bugs me that much (it just doesn’t blow me away, per se, despite how unique the band is), it’s just the length that does. With long albums, and not only on Pink Lemonade was this prevalent, but most long LPs have a tendency to repeat ideas, and this album does, too. Heavy Fruit does repeat a lot of the same ideas and formulas, which can get old after awhile, at least depending on what kind of music you enjoy. If you like this hard-rock meets psych-rock kind of sound, you’ll dig this a lot, but if you’re like me, and not really into hard-rock (I love psych-rock, honestly), this might not do too much for you. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still very unique, and I do enjoy this a lot more than most hard-rock albums I’ve heard in the last year or so, but at the same time, its length is what kind of keeps me from really loving it. If the album was maybe 45 – 50, I could get a bit more into it, but because it nears an hour, it’s a bit too much for me to really handle. One thing is for sure, however, I’m glad I listened to this album. He Is Legend is a very unique band, and I can see why people love this band. This band is insanely unique, and I love the sound on this record, but length does hinder my enjoyment of the LP. Regardless, I still enjoy it a lot. It’s certainly worth a listen, whether or not you’ve heard of this band. Even if you’ve never listened to a song of theirs in your life, it’s still worth it. I’m really happy I got the opportunity to review this LP, because it’s definitely one of the more interesting ones I’ve heard all year. It does beat Pink Lemonade by Closure In Moscow, and I feel as though this album had the same ideas as that LP, but Heavy Fruit executes the ideas much better. And while that may not mean anything to you if you haven’t heard Pink Lemonade, but it’s the same thing for any two bands that sound similar, where one is just blatantly better and more interesting. Heavy Fruit is definitely the more interesting record, and if you had to choose, this one is worth more of your time. Overall rating: 9.3/10 -Bradley
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 20:00:00 +0000
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