Cult of the Dead

Ever the heralds of death thrashing crossover, Dutch maniacs Occult changed their name a few albums back to Legion of the Damned and continued in the same general direction. In this, they've been steadily improving, and the last effort Feel the Blade, which was really just an altered re-issue of Occult's Elegy for the Weak, was a pretty kickass reminder.

So Cult of the Dead is the true follow-up to last year's Songs of the Jackal, and another offering of groin-punching savage thrashing death in the vein of earlier Kreator and Slayer with injections of blasting mayhem. There's nothing unique about it, but you do have to take into consideration the band has been doing this for many years, they're not riding some bandwagon. There are a few songs here which are entertaining, like "Black Templar" and "Enslaver of Souls" which are a lot of fun and had me pummeling my fist and thrashing about the room. "Solar Overlord" is also pretty good with the exception of a really generic, but thankfully brief breakdown. The rest are fairly average, and often the riffs feel just too familiar to derive a decisive and fresh sense of enjoyment. I preferred Feel the Blade, for what it was.

This is one of the most pure bands of the form. You get thrash and death metal, well balanced, with a solid mix, snarling vocals and some breakdowns that might just make your knee flex out and kick someone. But I'd like to hear catchier riffs, as they have offered in the past.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

Legion of the Damned are a band who have not changed one bit over the course of 4 albums. The song structures are identical, the riffs are similar, even the production has changed very little. Not only does every LotD album sound the same, but most of the songs sound pretty much the same too, but like the first reviewer mentioned, they somehow make it work. There's nothing new about them, the only modern aspect of the band is the production(which is very good I might add.) It's pretty much just a meshing of Slayer, Demolition Hammer, and Kreator. Which means it's hyper-fast thrash with raspy vocals, drumming that approaches light speed, and a lot of thrash breakdowns.

The music may not be overly technical, in fact it's pretty damn basic really, but one has to admire the ability to play at such insane speeds and still remain coherent. I would even go as far as to say these guys have a tight and precise sound. The riffs are pleasing, no doubt heavily inspired by Slayer. The bass is even pretty loud in the mix, and sometimes does some interesting things. Their vocalist is a perfect fit for this type of music, he doesn't have much diversity but he makes up for it with a truly evil and pissed off delivery. The drummer is a machine though, this guy is nuts. Not only can he play at insane speeds, he also does some really awesome groove patterns during the Slayer-ish breakdowns.

Picking out highlights in an album like this is next to impossible. All though I do want to mention the first song, "Pray and Suffer" which is one of the more unique sounding LotD songs, and the best they have ever done in my opinion. "House of Possession" is also worthy of mention. Both songs change up a lot and have some awesome thrash breaks to bang your head to. But for the most part every song is nearly identical, which is the major flaw that these guys have. They can write some kick ass tunes, they just seem to write the same one over and over again. There's also very little lead guitar, which really wouldn't bother me because brutal thrash solos usually suck anyways, except when lead guitar is used on this album, it's used to good effect. Oh, and the album was certainly "boosted" during production, which makes it about 10 times louder than most albums and can scare the shit out of you if you aren't expecting it, and also will give you a headache during prolonged listens.

If you like other brutal thrash bands like Morbid Saint, Torture Squad, Demolition Hammer, Epidemic, etc. Or if you are just looking for some good old fast paced thrash to bang your head to, these guys are definitely worth checking out. Just don't expect to hear anything you haven't all ready heard 20 times before...

It's really simple: if you want more Legion of the Damned you'll enjoy this, if you don't then you can ignore it. Once again, the Legion treats us with a relentless flood of riffs, touching on both thrash and death metal. Cult of the Dead does not differ in any way from their previous albums: stripped down extreme metal, designed to make you headbang, without a place for extensive noodling. As always, blistering fast metal mayhem is mixed in with slower, heavy breaks and the occasional catchy riff.

Lead sections are limited and the rare solo does few things more than add chaotic elements (think Trey Azagthoth or Kerry King minus the shredding) to the song. The bass is mostly invisible, barring a sparse line here and there. These two facts, combined with the lack of experimentation cause the overall product to be quite monotonous. The strong point of this band, however, is that they can make repetitiveness a good thing, and the album does not drag at all. With the exception of haunting electronic supplements in three songs, the inundation of fast guitars does not stop a single time.

The vocals lean more towards death metal, recalling Morbid Saint or Torture Squad. Like the rest of the music, they rely mostly on a single formula, breaking it only a handful of times on the entire album. The vicious drumming adds great background treats, ranging from psychotic fills to ardent double bassing. All of these particles are held together by a clean, modern production, which works amazingly well for the music. All in all, this is more of the good old Legion of the Damned, which will satisfy fans of the band. Adding more variation wouldn't have been a bad idea, but in general this is an excellent release.

This is the second 2008 release of Legion of the Damned after having released “Feel the Blade” just shy of a year earlier.

To get this out of the way from the very start: Legion of the Damned is still the same Legion of the Damned that you’ve known since the debut. So, if you very simply didn’t like the debut, please steer away.

They mainly have a production almost as modern as that of Torture Squad and they certainly both produce brutal music. However LotD tend to approach thrash in a rawer and more basic sense.

I wouldn’t know if it is appropriate to label this brutal thrash, though. Legion of the Damned’s sound as a whole is brutal, that’s definite, but that would only be a description to the feel it creates and not a legit labeling or description of what genre they perform. Brutal thrash would suit pure thrash bands that go really hellishly fast and just give you the feeling they’re ripping someone apart without having to add death metal elements. In other words: Darkness Descends. However, this, while thrashy, doesn’t exclusively count on that formula. The band rather incorporates death metal elements and sets a brutal atmosphere.

This album is relentless, obviously. As always Legion of the Damned depend on non-stop riff driven music, leaving no place for lead guitar, slow sections, or any of that sort to create any ambiance in the music. What they count on to create the brutal nature of the music is the kind of riffs they deliver with the vocals layered over them and as a result produce a raw nasty-like sound with an old-school touch disguised in a modern production.

As stated above, the band’s music is like a drive, their riffs are pretty much very similar in structure all throughout. The band also do use a lot of mid-paced heavy thrash breaks, and even those are similar in structure. Moreover, the way the music flows is exactly as you’ve got used to with LotD: Catchy intro riffs explode into faster tremolo-riffing that sound ripping and hard-hitting with Maurice Swinkels’ spiteful sounding death metal vocals adding taste on top of all that, and then an explosive neck-breaking thrash break hits you hard. Yes, there are even more thrash-breaks over here than on the debut.

Having mentioned the vocals, I must say even the vocalist utilizes a single formula in the delivery although he does do some more shrieky echo –ing screams every while. So basically the vocals don’t add variety to the albums, but actually contribute to its uniformity and monotony. Generally, their music is “predictable”; you know what the next song is going to offer, but you don’t know how powerful it will be.

However, monotony can be utilized in a positive way, which is the condition here. As a start, the album doesn’t drag, and that can be a redeeming factor about monotonous bands. Instead of showing variety in the song structures and the compositions, they simply stripped thrash to its basic form, hard-edged it up by giving it death metal attributes, neglected lead guitar ( which only appears at very limited times, and even then it just adds a bit of a “noisy” feature to the music, and doesn't actually lead) and just focused on trying in every single way possible to expand that simple formula by alternating between faster tremolo riffs, more mid-paced, and the more obvious breaks with Erik Fleuren giving a hand in all that through his rigorous drumming in the background. Guaranteed though, the riffs do actually break necks. It is such a pleasure to put on your headphones and listen to Legion of The Damned’s do the most basic but pleasurable riffing.

The lead guitar as mentioned above is almost absent. You can hear glimpses of it in songs like the title track, but even then it only goes hand in hand with the riffing at the very most and that is only for few seconds. If you like some lead guitar in your music, you might want to steer away, but if you only desire music like Dragonforce, what the fuck were you doing looking here in the first place? Also the bass doesn’t make a fancy appearance here. Now the band never actually gave the bass much solo emergence in their music, but they gave it a few flashy moments on the forefront. Here, Richard Ebisch apparently got selfish on the expense of the bassist Harold Gielen .Still though, I am only saying that as it would have been interesting to see some variation when it comes to the music’s forefront, but the bass is definitely given a spot and heard pleasurably especially in the more midpaced sections of the music just beneath the riffs. Regardless, apart from the intro track and the last seconds of the closing track (which features a keyboard playing), the machine-gun riffing never stops.

Even more notably, it’s clear the band does not intend to meditate or do summoning to the ancient lords of Pharaoh to gather inspiration to come up with a new level of intelligence in songwriting or any of that sort. Nah, the band’s music is basically 15-year old hardcore Kreator/Slayer fanatics’ daydream of making a massive metal audience headbang for unremitting hours with an angular velocity of 45454534679rad/s and a corresponding linear velocity of 126378374m/s.

In theory, this should be one of the more boring death/thrash bands, but theories CAN be hole-fucked, and, Legion of the Damned did exactly that and thus deservingly earned the title of the most interesting boring band.

As a closing note, this, along with the other latest Legion of the Damned’s albums, may not be better than the debut, for the simple fact that the debut was the most original sounding between them as it had more character, but in the end of the day, as monotonous as this is, it seems to grow on me after every listen rather than having the effect the other way around, so whatever. I also can’t tell which is their better 2008 album, this or Feel the Blade. Regardless the latter is a reissue anyway, but to be fully honest it’s useless to rank their post-debut albums.