Legend
Spirit

Legend is a name that requires something special, Steve Paine and his associates thinks that they have what it takes to be called legends. This is the fifth album as far as I can tell and it is the latest effort in a career that stretches back to a debut back in 1991. It has a magnificent cover artwork that is a painting made by british artist Josephine Wall, a very exciting and thought provoking artwork. Female fronted progressive rock/metal, can it really be anything more exciting for me? Well, it is right up there with what I like best in music so it should really be laid out for some encouraging words about the album from myself, or shall it?

Well, the music is grande, it is magnificent with big arrangement and pompous pieces. All the songs are very long reaching between just short of seven minutes to over eighteen minutes giving the five songs a playing time of over one hour. This carries some penalties in form of parts that feels completely unnecessary, but this is being pasted over by brilliant vocals and an excellent production. There is really nothing to complain about how they perform their composition, the problems they might have lies in the composition itself.

But the album is good, the choruses with big pompous choirs and such are excellent and epic. But striving for the latter has also led to some complete waste like in parts of Leap of Faith, State of Grace and A Tangled Skein where the latter has a horrible example of how you should not end a song, several minutes of moaning and repetitive dull music is not a good ending. This actually had me bringing out my bashing equipment as it filled me with the urge to bash the album and especially the composer and then watch him slowly die just for torturing me with that awful crap. And of course for making what should be a fantastic album sound completely average. If there is anything I hate, it is average and to make something wonderful into something average is damn near a criminal act. Why make such long songs? It is obvious that most of them are just filled out with stuff that shouldn’t be there and it ruins the album for me, it is so strange that so many bands calling themselves progressive do this, it rarely works and when it doesn’t is sours the entire experience of listening to the album, like in this case. I am sorry but despite all the brilliance I fail to appreciate this album, a bad album I can take but this one hour of up and down thing is just a bit much for my head.

It is not a bad album but it is one that I am very ambivalent to, I was actually thinking of editing the songs as I wanted but decided against it as it would take too much time and I have other music to write about. I think it is in part brilliant, choruses are excellent and many melodies are fantastic. At the same time it is horrifically bad and I can feel how I just want to vomit and it gives me a headache. Jekyll and Hyde perhaps, that is a good way of describing this album. It could have been one of my favourite albums up there with the brilliance of Ayreon and the likes but instead it ends up in that pile of music that will never ever be played again and probably forgotten within a week from now.

Legend’s Spirit is definitely a fairly good album, I love the sound and the vocals and most parts of it. But it bears this disease that just makes me shun it at the same time, I think it is a disappointment knowing how good I believe it could have been. I would think of it as a fallen legend, sad but true.

HHHHHHH