Reviews for the new "Wake Up, Legend" LP:
"Chris Thomson is still pissed about the state of pop music, and thank
God (Iggy!) for Wake Up, Legend, the first full-length album from Red
Eyed Legends, the former Circus Lupus, Skull Control, and Monorchid
frontman's current musical incarnation. Wake Up, Legend is a sound for
sore ears. . . . Red Eyed Legends excel in their postpunk, awkward
danciness and told-you-so rockness, like Buddy Holly's rock band in
Hell. From the twangy, slapback beginning chords of the opener
'Monsters' (a little ditty about daytime television, blindfolds you can
see through, dungeons, microphones, etc) to the final chords of
'Expectations vs. Reality' (another top-rate romp with Thomson deriding
the ridiculousness of punk, exposing the inert lameness that often
surrounds music scenes), Thomson holds the same authority he always
has, spouting off new ideas and eliciting rabid animal anger to all the
unfortunate situations, obvious statements, lowest common denominators,
uninformed people, fakers, posers, imposters, and other idiots that
somehow stumble into becoming musical authority. Take heed, charlatans,
you have been warned!" --Skyscraper Magazine
"The Red Eyed Legends crank to life with a mouth-foaming aggression,
jag-edged guitar riffs rebounding off the crazy confines of their
songs, squawks and honks of Farfisa flying, and frontman Chris Thomson
snarling out hazily rhymed, rapid-motion lines. . . . On this first
full-length, the band’s sound is pitched somewhere between garage rock
and punk, its stutter spazz intensity recalling the Ex Models, its
giddy swathes of organ tone evoking classic stompers like the Lyres.
'Je M’Apelle Macho' is a ripping tangle of rumble-ready guitars and
cross-band shouts, all sharp, acute angles and staccato rhythms. The
guitar solo that breaks from all this chaotic angst, though, has a
tinge of 60s surf in it, an evil, melodic heft like one of the Mermen
with a bad migraine. Later, on 'Bloody Birds' a spook-house Farfisa
takes center stage, building bright, wavery textures of sound behind
Thomson’s hoarse-throated rhyming. . . . The band is chaotically tight,
a machine gun splatter of notes rebounding off walls at crazy angles,
yet meshing somehow into a steady, head-pounding rhythm. Like the Fall,
they create a boxy, constrained sound whose firestorm energy is
concentrated and contained within repetitive structures. It’s a
platform, really, for Thomson, who riffs rhythmically over the music,
his lines full of internal stresses and cadences. . . . That internal
rhythm, augmented with occasional group shouts and call-and-responses,
makes the Red Eyed Legends sound sometimes like an extremely rough,
garage-rocking kind of rap. . . . If it’s time for you to wake up, as
it was for these Red Eyed Legends, you could do worse than “Monsters”.
There’s no snooze button on that cut, that’s for sure." --Pop Matters
"Punk with all the primitive joy, humor, energy, anger and
self-directed disgust that makes it what it is. Chris Thomson (from the
Monorchid) is still alive and kicking!" --Slumber Party International
"This band really sounds like a pissed-off version of the B-52s, which
is almost a contradiction in terms. It’s like being at an
abortion-clinic protest on ecstasy. You just want to dance but
everybody’s angry about dead fetuses and whatnot. I’m just waiting for
'Rock Lobster' to come on." --Vice