Praying Mantis - Legacy - review
Praying Mantis - Legacy - review
Tracklist
01. Fight For Your Honour02. The One
03. Believable
04. Tokyo
05. Better Man
06. All I See
07. Eyes Of A Child
08. The Runner
09. Against The World
10. Fallen Angel
11. Second Time Around
A review by
ScreamingSteelUS November 07, 2015
Alright, fine. So it's not strictly an NWOBHM album. It's not as though there's any NWOBHM to be a part of anymore. Even pushing past my unfulfilled expectations, however, I just can't shake the feeling that this review should be written by somebody 30 years older than me wearing an REO Speedwagon shirt or something. It's not quite glam metal, because as easy as it is to revert to images of Whitesnake and House Of Lords when confronted with descriptions of keyboard-heavy pissant pop, this really does have more in common with regular, old hard rock. Occasionally they throw in some twin guitar leads that sound vaguely Iron Maiden-y, appropriately for a so-called NWOBHM band. While the harmonies strengthen their case for being called metal, attracting particular attention on "Tokyo," they don't have the same scorching attack as those wrought by the masters of the craft, which could be said about most aspects of Legacy.
I'll admit to being shocked by the immediacy and attitude of "Fight For Your Honour," the first track on the album. After several albums of synth-glazed power pop, hearing a song that sounds like it was actually written for a metal album brings quite a shock to the senses. This seems to be a fluke, however, because the rest of the songs carry on much like the band's older, less aggressive material. Legacy in general sounds vaguely heavier than previous releases, and not just due to higher production values and more modern techniques, but it's not enough to shirk the phantoms of mainstream banality, and the album fails to match even 2009's Sanctuary in terms of memorable songwriting.
"The Runner" and "Eyes Of A Child," to be fair, help Praying Mantis stake a claim to this "legacy" that they've been on about by drawing some tangible connection to the past. These tracks could pass for late-'80s Iron Maiden B-sides, or maybe some late-era Thin Lizzy archive recordings. In fact, controverting the standard rules of albums, Legacy seems to get better as it progresses. Of course, the progression is from "this reminds me of that slop bucket of a band people call Quiet Riot, and I have better music to kill myself with" to "if this came on the radio and every other station had Glenn Danzig giving an interview about the bricks in his front yard, I'd probably listen through the first chorus."
Most NWOBHM bands seem to bear the same curse - they all used up their listenable material back in the '80s. When your golden era falls somewhere between "mediocre" and "well, at least it ain't Styx," it's hard to produce something meaningful decades deep into your decline. To give credit where credit is due, the first and last songs on Legacy both sound uncharacteristically decent, and vocalist John "Jaycee" Cuijpers occasionally sounds enough like Dio to make me sympathetic. Still, don't bother getting as excited for Legacy as I was, unless you happen to enjoy being disappointed.
Rating breakdown
| Performance: | 8 |
| Songwriting: | 6 |
| Originality: | 3 |
| Production: | 7 |
Written on 07.11.2015 by
Written on 07.11.2015 by
Dull Music for Dull People Comments
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Feeling that this review should be written by somebody 30 years older than me wearing an REO Speedwagon I have one guy n mind but t shirt don't match ....  I hope you know what I meant whit older LOLunderated band, I add news about samples, really good band, somehow keeps old sound alive, and even today can bring good album as Uriah heep does
---- I stand whit Ukraine and Israel. They have right to defend own citizens. Stormtroopers of Death - "Speak English or Die"  I better die, because I never will learn speek english, so I choose dieing
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