‘The Prowler’ leads the charge – or attempts to, the verses licking the dirt-rock, speedster boots of ZEKE and HOOKERS, while the choruses are straight out of the early CLUTCH playbook. The dragging tempo of the final minute or so, instead of being climactic, arrives and pulverizes any built-up interest into dust by the time ‘Lifeless Lemonade’ arrives, and if you’ve ever wondered why some of MAYLENE & THE SONS OF DISASTER works and HE IS LEGEND never seems to, this is your template; rhythms built for skipping, disjointed cut/paste rock interspliced with a weird ‘80s pop vocal nod at 2:30 that I was impressed by until it devolved into GREEN DAY pop-punk. Oh, don’t worry, that bit – like most of Endless Hallway – is a desperate grab for any sort of style, songcraft be damned.

‘Return To The Garden’ kicks off tolerably enough, bit of STONE TEMPLE PILOTS circa Tiny Music From The Vatican Gift Shop revealing that if the foursome really, really, no, really wants to, they can hold interest for a few minutes. Oh, look, KORN’s here for the ‘Circus Circus’, vocalist Schuylar Croom managing to ape both Jonathan Davis’ forever-irritating “scat” and bargain basement Mike Patton in less time than even I’d have thought possible at this point.

A weakly-picked intro drags my ears kicking and screaming against the abuse I’m subjecting them to courtesy of ‘Sour’, and it’s more of the same. Twee, ostentatious, and undeservedly full of itself, it seems HE IS LEGEND truly feels that any genre (or variant thereof) is their playground in which to frolic, and it’ll “all turn out alright” because “it just has to, brah!”.

‘Time’s Fake’ is enjoyable for what it is, the only tune where HIL hit all the marks, and I’m hearing bits of Sunset Strip glam, but dirtier, like the first MÖTLEY CRÜE records, and it’s not a bad thing. While I really hoped for good things with ‘Lord Slug’, this self-described “shocking” run-through of religious “buzzwords and phrases” falls not only prostrate before the altar of good taste it manages to do so in a manner that can only be called “sludge-lite”.

At a tiresome 12 songs, the only thing truly eternal about Endless Hallway is that wistful feeling that this passage had doors, and HE IS LEGEND might’ve disappeared through one before foisting this garbage upon us.
Review By: Lord Randall

HE IS LEGEND
Endless Hallway
Spinefarm
0 / 6