Night Legion is a heavy metal band from Australia formed in 2016, releasing two albums to date – ‘Night Legion’ (2017) and ‘Fight Or Fall’ (2023).
The band may be from the land down under, but their sound shares so much with the muscular style of American power metal – not that it’s a bad thing! Hell no! Night Legion are a powerful heavy metal machine of immense energy and force, and for forty minutes via nine songs, the band capture your attention in a vice-like grip with screaming vocals and crushing guitars. Album opener ‘The Hounds Of Baskerville’ strides majestically out of the blocks, pounding the ground hard with authority and aplomb – Night Legion, making listeners immediately sit up and take notice. The bustling nature of ‘The Hounds Of Baskerville’ is incredible, the band energetically banging the heads of every metalhead from Australia to Britain – and back again!
Increasing the heaviness from the opening song, the band also increase the pace to a gallop for the “foot on the monitor” metaller ‘Babylon Burns’ – and a massive melodious injection, too! Night Legion have made an immense impression with an opening double salvo of intense, yet infectious heavy metal. And it still amazes me to this day, that a brand of metal forged forty-five years ago, is still influencing bands today! It’s as though bands such as Angel Witch, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Motorhead and Saxon are the benchmark for all new metal bands today. And just what the hell am I talking about – of course, these bands are the benchmark for new bands, the evolution of metal beginning during the late seventies and into the eighties in the UK and spreading to the rest of the world. Nowhere and no one is safe from the overwhelming influence of Britain with regard to heavy metal.
And keeping their collective feet firmly on the monitor, the band roars on with ‘Soaring Into The Black’, a barnstorming barrage of headbang ability emanating from the album – Night Legion, also increasing the pace to become an all-out, balls out, mosh pit friendly metal machine! The title song ‘Fight Or Fall’, opens with an eerie intro and soulful vocals, progressing into a mid-tempo melodic power metal stroll – the band keeping the feel of muscular American metal very much in the ascendancy! And with power balladry as the backdrop to the beginning of ‘At World’s End’, after just forty seconds in, Night Legion set off a thousand incendiary devices, pushing ‘At World’s End’ forward at a great rate of knots, banging heads harder and faster than ever before.
So far, ‘Fight Or Fall’ (the album) has been straddling the genres of power and traditional heavy metal, the band effortlessly moving between the two – ‘Beyond The Crimson Dawn’ raising the levels of power and pace to new heights! The worldwide mosh pits will love this one, Night Legion delivering a neck-snapping dose of fast-paced metal! It is amazing stuff from a young band still finding their feet in the metal world. The intensity of the album too, has been incredible, ‘Harvest Of Sin’ returning the eerie feel of earlier, the band stirring in some Black Sabbath-style doom metal as the song gets underway proper. And then along comes an almighty foot-stomping attitude, ‘Harvest Of Sin’ chugging relentlessly on to a conclusion. And with just two songs left to go, ‘Fight Or Fall’ (the album) has been one of the heaviest listens this year, outside of thrash metal, that is!
Melodic heavy metal rises high in the air as ‘The Enemy’ comes to life and marches on with all the intensity of the entire album up to this point – the band maintaining an unbroken streak. Everything Night Legion do is heavy and thunderous, not to mention barnstorming too – ‘Fight Or Fall’ (the album) a tremendous tsunami of heavy metal to tickle the senses and fondle the pleasure zones of every metalhead everywhere! And I mean, everywhere! Bringing the album to a close, ‘The Hand Of Death’ maintains the cracking sound of power metal come British American influenced heavy metal, Night Legion, making a late surge for the Album Of The Year title.
Overall, a breathless album of power comes with heavy metal with sky-high levels of head-bang ability.
TRACKLIST
The Hounds Of Baskerville
Babylon Burns
Soaring Into The Black
Fight Or Fall
At World’s End
Beyond The Crimson Dawn
Harvest Of Sin
The Enemy
The Hand Of Death
Night Legion: Facebook
Release Year: 2023
Label: Massacre Records
Category: Album
Country: Australia
Reviewed by Iron Mathew for Frenzy Fire and Metal-Roos.
