Legacy Black

Legacy Black

Legacy Black

July 12th, 2019

Legacy Black: Legacy Black July 12th, 2019 1.Legacy Black (3:25) 2.While All Along (7:15) 3.Mary (9:32) 4.Current State (5:24) 5.The Winter of My Discontent (11:46) total time 37 minutes

Legacy Black (Chicago, U.S.A.) issues its self-titled five-song 37-minute album. The band is Donovan Torres on bass guitar, Juan Cardenas on drums, Joyce Jenkins on keyboards and vocals, and Clint Davis on guitar and lead vocals. This publication just received the album a couple of days ago. The existence of this band, while perhaps no mystery to the fans in Chicago that have witnessed the shows long before there ever was a recording, was not clear, when seen from a long distance here in the Seattle area. Was this a tribute band? Was it a covers-only band? It wasn’t until the answer came straight from the horse’s mouth that, no, this is new and original compositions and they were working on an album. In addition, supposedly the singer was Clint Davis who, despite making music and being in bands for some two decades (maybe longer), had never been a lead vocalist, only a guitarist. However, the drummer Cardenas, a musician that has done work with Davis in a couple of other bands, has known for a long time that Davis can sing and has been putting a bug in Davis’ ear to finally do lead vocals. Cardenas apparently knew Davis’ dirty little secret: that he sings rather well. Still, the band, despite playing shows in the Chicago area, had posted exactly jack squat online for non-Chicago people to hear. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. It seemed like you had to contact secret sources in Chicago to find out what the deal was.

Until now. The summer of 2019. While still working through it all, let’s see the first song. The guitar tone is ear-friendly traditional heavy rock that just about all metal fans will recognize and be comfortable with, and it features a big riff that demands hearing it again. This one is a show-opening type of song. Relatively short, and ear-friendly big-riff music. The song is very likable, with some proggy keyboards, with a classic rock feel. The singing? It’s a very attractive singing voice that stays on the strengths of the male voice; a voice that projects, and not thin, not nasal, not high, not weak but rather robust while still melodic. The Legacy Black drummer Cardenas was right all along. Davis has an appealing rock voice. Well, now, if this is any indication of the rest of the album, then we’re about to be pleasantly surprised by an accessible adult contemporary metal album that metal moms and dads are going to enjoy, and be ok playing in the minivan while driving the kids to the ballet, kickboxing and lethal combat classes, in an effort to indoctrinate the children into metal music.

Let’s come back to the other songs later. facebook.com/legacyblackband/