Despite an apparent ten years of history and three previous albums I'm afraid this was another new name to me. Still, that can be fun; discovery and all that, you know. However it also plies its art in the dangerously flat waters of melodic death metal (the blackened end thereof) and that can be a tricky beast to raise above the mundane. Still it's well liked sea, so lets push the boat out once more and see what Legio Mortis have for us..
Obligatory intro over the legion warn of the sound to come with a punchy DM riff clattering over spooky choral keyboards for 'Unholy Four'. The vocals are a guttural rumble with occasional twisted rasps and the moody, tuneful riff rides the kind of keyboard melody that forces me to return to my standard reference point of CoF circa From the Cradle to Enslave. It's an evocative sound template and the track is nicely played and sung, but the song goes very few places over it's seven minutes and the next song too slides in under the radar.
'Buried Love', however, does rattle me awake quite nicely after that. With a keyboard refrain that reminds me of early Nightwish and a much lighter riff style the band steam full on into gothic metal territory but thankfully without the unneeded saccharin of a winsome waif warbling on. Ending on a fine guitar lead of melancholy it is clear this band are trying to steer into a different current. 'Pity The Sadness' continues this, with the guitar shouldering the majority of the tune for once, and it's a spirited affair. Catchy, too.
The delightfully titled song 'From Throat to Cunt' isn't something from the Sevared Records repetoire, instead its a downbeat bit of semi-grime that makes a fair stab at storytelling and it draws me in nicely, actually.
Things do drift again then for a while. 'Wir Brauchen Keine Hirten' does kind of summon half a Rotting Christ song and tinge but before long we go back to the more Death Metal style of things.
Then we get Liv Kristine. A neat guest to be able to bring in and here she is lending her pretty and sweet but hardly forceful voice to 'Life Denied'. It drags things back to the gothic once more but honestly far more interesting than the vocals is the guitar line and the death vocals which make me think of very early Within Temptation (no, really, they did have death vocals cropping up originally, honest).
The odd thing is the closing track 'Thorn In My Eye' exemplifies the problem with Legio Mortis. This is almost full on melodic Black Metal but with all the bite pulled by the production and an inexplicable mid section that drags things to a shuddering halt.
I guess in the end its a pretty mixed bag: Way too melodic for the underground but still needing perhaps more identity to plough its way in the wider world. A little variation in the one keyboard sound used here might also help no end, too. Not bad, just perhaps in need of a bit more of a spark to set it alight and either a better blending of the death, black and gothic or a firm decision on direction
http://www.myspace.com/legio666mortis
