Legion of the Damned - Slaves of the Shadow Realm (2019)^{Release ID: 15339}

For those who weren't previously acquainted with them (which seems to be nearly everyone, including me), Legion of the Damned are a Dutch deaththrash outfit who formed in 1992 as Occult, releasing five full-lengths under that monicker until changing their name to Legion of the Damned in 2005, possibly because they had switched from a female vocalist, Rachel Heyzer, to a male singer, Maurice Swinkels and they wanted to differentiate their sound at that point. Slaves of the Shadow Realm is their seventh album as Legion of the Damned, being originally released in 2019 on Napalm Records.

Right, so now we all know who they are, what do they sound like? Well they don't hang around leaving us waiting to find out as they are straight out of the gate at full velocity with The Widows Breed providing a nitrous-powered opening salvo of blisteringly-paced deaththrash. The tracks all fall into one of two camps, the first of which is the high-powered assaults that follow the template of the opener, or more medium-paced fayre. This is pretty much the only variation that you will find here.

The positives I take away from Slaves of the Shadow Realm is the riffs which aren't bad at all with a nice dirty crunch to them that did manage to get me nodding awayand secondly Maurice Swinkels' vocals, his blackened rasp possessing the requisite evilness that the material requires. The major downside for me is the solos - there ain't nothing like enough of them and when guitarist Twan van Geel does let them go they don't sound especially impressive and are shoved down in the mix, feel muted as a result. The solos play a big part in thrash metal, so for me this is a serious negative. Many a time I was begging for a Jeff Hannemann screaming solo to burst onto the scene and grab this or that track by the throat, only to be disappointed by there being either none at all or (possibly worse) a completely lacklustre effort. The bass and drums are functional and don't do much special. The drums seem quite in-your-face whilst the bass much less so.
I think it is not particularly unfair to say that on the evidence of this Legion of the Damned are what could be termed a "journeyman" metal outfit. This isn't a problem for me as much as for some metalheads - I don't constantly need to be challenged by new sounds and ideas, I can be quite happy with an album that makes me nod my head and tap my feet and treads well-worn roads. I think this band could feature under Ben's old thread "Bands with loads of releases no one cares about", which is a shame as when they do click they are pretty decent and I can assure you I have definitely heard a lot worse!