He Is Legend

It Hates You

[3/5]

North Carolina’s He Is Legend are notorious for a number of things. First, there’s the never-ending drama surrounding who may or may not be in the band at any given point. They’re definitely infamous for the nonstop, 100 percent awesomeness that is their “Attack Of The Dungeon Witch” video. Then, there’s the little matter of their constantly morphing musical face. Over the course of three albums, they’ve gone from metalcore to swampy rock/metal to It Hates You, which is a sometimes-uneasy combination of bluesy, Southern stoner rock/metal and the sort of alt-rock that was tearing up the airwaves during a good chunk of the ’90s. Picture huge swathes of Third Eye Blind, Counting Crows, I Mother Earth and Filter polish infiltrating some dirty beard rock, and there you go.



The trouble is that the now-quartet are trying too hard to spread their wings, and the result often sounds cribbed together and disjointed. Leadoff track “Dicephalous” is probably the best at combining the elements of glitz and grime, however “The Primarily Blues” pastes together incompatible verses with mid-period Metallica choruses. “Party Time!” has a sweet melodic-metal chorus, but reaches a bit too far with the backing soul-songstress vocals. Then comes the hideous-sounding, melodramatic ’90s frat rock that dominates the album’s second half. No worries, though; there are plenty of decent rockers on It Hates You and chances are the band are going to go off in a different direction come next album–assuming there is a next album. (TRAGIC HERO) Kevin Stewart-Panko

GO DOWNLOAD: “Dicephalous”