He Is Legend

Endless Hallway

My first experience with He Is Legend was a Southern stop of the Solid State Youngbloods Tour in the back room venue of a beloved pizza joint/brewpub just off the Interstate. I wasn’t familiar with the band, but as was so often the case in the early ‘aughts, you showed up for one band and left a fan of several others, with t-shirts and CDs to prove it.

HIL set up, line-checked, and launched into their opening number. Vocalist Schuyler Croom careened onto the stage through the outside door, clad in a pea coat, fingerless gloves, an angler’s cap, a prodigious beard, and a wild look in his eye. He leapt up onto the mic, opened his mouth to scream…

…and there was nothing to do but hold on for dear life.

Croom’s performance also reminds us that he has a weapon of a voice and an acerbic way with words tucked into in the pocket of his torn denim jacket…

Since then, He Is Legend’s resonance has ebbed and surged, but their newest offering, Endless Hallway, is likely to cause a lot of folks who may have turned their ears elsewhere to do the musical equivalent of a double-take. Perhaps the best way to describe it is this: Endless Hallway sounds HUNGRY. It’s the sound of a band going for the throats of their audience.

The opening track, “The Prowler,” isn’t exactly aptly named, because there’s nothing subtle or sneaky about this song’s immediate sonic assault — which is actually a compliment rather than a criticism. As the album continues, bewildering time, tempo, and rhythm changes swirl around the listener in the best way possible. Any one of the tracks in the band’s seventh studio album could hold its own as a single.

Croom’s performance also reminds us that he has a weapon of a voice and an acerbic way with words tucked into in the pocket of his torn denim jacket, and they’re still capable of cutting right to the point, but not without a little melody and style thrown in.

He Is Legend has always been heavy, but it seems that with Endless Hallway, they were keen to prove that heavy-as-all-get-out is the order of the day, and we can’t argue. All these years later, it’s a wonderful distillation of what was great about them in the first place.

Press play and hold on, y’all.