Legend (JEY) - Death in the Nursery (1982)^{Release ID: 6086}

I quite liked the self-financed & self-titled debut album from Jersey-based NWOBHM band Legend. It’s unique blend of Black Sabbath influenced heavy metal, hard rock & progressive rock earnt the band a fair few spins on my car stereo recently. But Legend weren’t quite done yet as they quickly went about recording & releasing their sophomore album entitled “Death In The Nursery” the following year.

There are some noticeable differences between the two releases with the band’s sound offering more variety & showing a new-found maturity that wasn’t as evident on the debut. The strong Black Sabbath influence that played such a big part on Legend’s debut has been toned down substantially here with “Death In The Nursery” sporting a more melodic sound that sits somewhere between the heavy metal of Judas Priest & the progressive hard rock of Rush on this occasion. There’s still plenty of ambition shown in the arrangements & the musicianship showcases the class of the individual band members well here too.

Vocalist Mike Lezala’s clean vocal approach sounds better suited to this material as it’s not as dark & doomy & there are more up-tempo numbers. Mike’s also helped substantially by the increased emphasis on song-writing & accessibility in these arrangements which make his unintimidating delivery sound more fit for purpose than it appeared to be on “Legend”. I recently read that one of Legend’s original guitarists Marco Morosino had left in the time between the two records however I can’t say that I miss him because remaining guitarist Peter Haworth does a brilliant job without him. His solos are thoroughly engaging & he shows that he has some chops to burn at various stages across the tracklisting.

While the production is still quite raw due to the self-produced nature of the product, it’s by no means a sore point & is acceptable at worst. Legend have certainly learnt a few things since the debut in that regard but it’s still pretty easily to tell that this a self-produced effort.

Overall, I think “Death In The Nursery” is a bit of a step up from the debut & a bit of that comes with an increased maturity in the sound & song-writing. It’s a shame that Legend didn’t go on to bigger & better things because they were certainly capable of it. A record label budget & an experienced producer may have made all the difference & propelled Legend on to a much more fruitful career than they’ve had to date. As it stands, I believe that they are still floating around having released uneventful albums in 2003 & 2013 but it’s probably unlikely that we’ll see a late career resurgence from them at this point.