LEGACY OF HATE, Unmitigated Evil (2008, Maintain)

The skull:
There’s something off about the dimensions of this skull that makes me think it’s perhaps supposed to be a child’s. I guess plopping a kid’s skull in a pile of bones (or whatever) is pretty evil, although if that evil were totally unmitigated, I imagine there’d probably be a whole lot more skulls. And probably less foliage, which isn’t very evil at all.

The music:
Googling for information about this band, I turned up a lot of heavy metal references to “legacy of hate,” the phrase. It’s a Fight song. It’s a Celesty album. It’s a Hellfighter (aka: the singer from Xentrix’s band) single. And, of course, it’s this Austrian band. Usually when that sort of thing happens, it turns out the phrase is the title of a book or movie, or was part of some famous speech, but I can’t seem to find the source (unless all these groups were fans of the 60s TV western The Virginian), so I’m just going to assume that this is a phrase so utterly generic that it’s been coined dozens of times. Which is to say, it’s absolutely perfect for a band with a big dumb skull cover. Legacy of Hate are a melodic death metal band that are neither bad nor at all noteworthy. Just the same thing you’ve heard countless times before, done better and worse. They’re from Austria, but though I usually expect an off-kilter oddness from Austrian metal bands, Legacy of Hate don’t have a measure of quirk to spare. Straight up and down, these guys. If you love the first albums by In Flames and Dark Tranquillity, then you probably won’t dislike Legacy of Hate, but you’re almost certainly bored by the myriad bands who have tried to reinvent that wheel over the last 15 years or so, so while Legacy of Hate might pass the time inoffensively, that’s about as good as it’s gonna get.
— Friar Johnsen