Legend
Legend
Reviewed by Doug Van Pelt
Anyone who caught the band Ruscha three years ago on its "Come Alive" tour will remember hearing a powerhouse commercial Hard Rock band (a la Europe) blowing doors down with some high velocity tightness and energy. The core of that band, vocalist Andy Denton, guitarist Mike Jacobs and drummer Billy Williams, went on to form what is now Legend. In the long run, this band just might live up to its name. Playing a very tight, very commercial Hard Rock, this band creates hooks big enough to fetch a whale. Monster Rock tunes like "Set This Place On Fire", "Colours" and "Friendly Fire" could set this band up well with a mainstream audience. This band seems well-suited for the advent of major video exposure via something like the upcoming Z-TV network. The chops are all there and fitted together with a tenacious tightness that makes each nuance and rhythm change amplified. When I first heard this album, I thought I was hearing a band go for the Whiteheart/Petra vibe, but closer examination reveals a much heavier foundation than those other bands, actually earning it the broad label/ umbrella of Metal that a Rock band like Europe gets described with. A couple songs stand out from the rest: a killer acoustic ballad called "Lead Me Back" and a Blues tune shaped around Isaiah 40:31, called "They That Wait". "Angela" is a great middle-of-the-road rocker about an attractive girl who is lost to the world. This band is gonna get noticed and get a lot of radio airplay on Christian Rock stations, and they've got what it takes to live up to any of their musical hype.