Legend of the World

Before hearing any of their music, I caught Valient Thorr at a show that was within walking distance from me, around the time this album came out. It was a battle of the bands type festival where the next band scheduled to play would just start playing, rather than having to wait a billion years for the previous band to break down their equipment, because the venue had set up a few different stages in the same room. So I just sort of, wandered in. I was already intrigued because all the members had battlejackets, extremely fuzzy heads, and the vocalist was already showing a very energetic (and eccentric) stage presence even when he was just bullshitting with the crowd. I figured I would stick around just to see what they were like, even though I was already dragging ass and really wanted to grab a Red Bull and walk around a bit until a band I had heard of was ready to go on. As soon as they started playing, I didn't really need that heartattack soda anymore, because the music immediately stirred me into a frenzy. As did the otherworldly ramblings of the vocalist, who, during the set, somehow managed to climb all the way up into the rafters of the gigantic venue (a remodeled opera house, if that gives you any idea of what kind of feat this was) and onto one of the balconies, as the security guards frantically scrambled around (what were they going to do about it anyway?). Before I knew it I was headbanging and moshing, and my extremely shy adolescent ass even looked for the frontman after the show to shake his hand and commend his performance.

Sounding like what would happen if Whiplash and Blackfoot decided to collaborate, it's literally southern rock with noodly and unpredictably bombastic speed metal licks and drumming, and a vocalist that is somewhere between Lemmy Kilmister and Isaac Brock. Sometimes he even sounds like Dave Trenga when he's really going hard. There's no egotistical perfectionism, or big kahuna rock star attitudes or anything of that sort, just them being shamelessly them. Their music is very heavy, very catchy, and at times can be dark, brooding and slightly psychedelic much like 70's Judas Priest, which I can assume without fear of contradiction is a huge influence on this group. The lyrics are very outspoken, sometimes coming off as just ranting. The lyrical themes are often political, like the infectious banger "Exit Strategy," and other times just about whatever they decided to write about. An awkward social situation, trials and tribulations of the music industry, claiming to be LSD addled beings from a different planet. There really isn't much of a formula at all as far as what they seek to express. They're a very wild and free-spirited band, which is impressive because even back then they looked like they were pushing 40, maybe even 50. I don't know what gives them such youthful energy. Maybe it's genuinely not giving a fuck, maybe it's the music itself, maybe it's drugs, or some combination of the three. Or it could be simply because they're Valient Thorr.

The guitar work in particular is great, and although there's a lot of dual guitar harmonies, it isn't nearly as dry or predictable as rockier bands with dual leads tend to be much of the time. Most of the songs don't have repeating sections, and just go from one awesome section to the next. This is all around a very fun and addictive album. If southern rock and southern metal sounded more like this, I'd listen to it far more often than I do, which is basically never.