Stranded 2011

"Luis Dubuc, the main man of Of Legends, is perhaps best known for his work with the electronica project The Secret Handshake. There's no electronica on this album, though, as Of Legends' style is groovy and heavy metalcore - with the occasional blastbeat section.

There are ups and downs to this album. On the upside are the many insanely heavy and groovy riffs. I mean, fans of heavy breakdowns should love this stuff, because every song basically consists completely of the type of riffs that many metalcore bands reserve for their breakdowns. Another upside is the crisp and well defined, but not too polished production, which serves the groovy riffs really well (I tend to prefer high production values with groovy metal, so the rhythmic details of the groovy riffs are not drowned in fuzz.

The downside ti this album is that it becomes kind of monotonous very quickly, because a lot of the tracks are very similar to one another (but this, of course, means that whenever Of Legends do something different, it really stands out - such as the punky riff in the middle of "Consecro"). It's not that the music is bad or anything, "Stranded" is just one of the albums where it is best to listen to a couple of songs at the time.

I think that fans of heavy and groovy metalcore and perhaps even sludge metal will like this album; in particular, it should appeal to fans of the likes of The Psyke Project.

(review originally posted on metalmusicarchives.com)"