The artist: Finishing off American traditional metal month, we have Legend, more specifically the Legend from Connecticut. They are a short lived band who only ever released one album in 1979. Despite their brief time on the road, Legend have had an influence on some of the American traditional metal bands today. The best example is Slough Feg who covered The Wizard's Vengeance on Twilight of the Idols. Whoever looked further in the cover songs by Slough Feg will have come across Legend at some point. The band split up a few years later after Ray Frigon left the band. The rest of the band felt there was no strong replacement for him and split up. Unfortunately, the frontman Kevin Nugent passed away in his sleep in 1983. If it weren't for that, he could have returned to this band and made plenty more great material for the metal world.
The album: Fröm the Fjörds is Legend's only album. Although the psychadelic rock/blues rock elements were strong, it's hard to deny this band as heavy metal considering The Destroyer, The Wizard's Vengeance and the instrumental The Confrontation. There were even a few songs about vikings and this was a time before the term viking metal even existed. You can easily tell there was a lot of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin influences here and while it may seem they were just another band who sounded too much like them, Legend would have further developed their musical style if Kevin Nugent was still with us. Fröm the Fjörds is an extremely rare album on CD but if you ever come across it on eBay or wherever, be sure to pick it up right away as it might be a once in a lifetime chance.
The song: The Golden Bell is the ballad of the album and for 7 minutes this song accomplishes a lot. The moment you hear the intro of the song, you know there's something magical about it. What has to be noted is Kevin Nugent's great vocal performance. He has the emotion to show what's going on through the song and there's definitely something depressing about the line "For our lives may too soon end" which could be seen as harsher in hindsight considering Kevin would pass away a few years later. The song goes in an instrumental phase where the psychadelic rock elements truly show in the album. The second half of the song continues the psychadelic phase with vocals and eventually returns to the soft side of the track to be heard once more.
The lyrics are based on Greek mythology and although many metal bands have covered Greek mythology, hearing a song about Poseidon seems rare for some reason. It's not just about Poseidon, though as it shows Hades taking over the world and the world being saved by pegasus and the golden bell at the temple. Overall, The Golden Bell has to be one of the most beautiful metal songs ever played with some greatly crafted tempo and mood changes. This is a legend that's been forgotten and wrongfully so.
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