Legion of Boom starts out strong, bellowing robotic bass on the murky house number “Starting Over.” Bursts of feedback lick a rolling organ riff before the beats drop in. The track escalates until rapper Rahzel of the Roots chimes in, his voice cut up into percussive smacks and snippets, leading the rhythm deeper into clubland.
The next track is the album’s strongest, blending the Crystal Method’s insatiable rock habit with their hefty dance heritage. “Born Too Slow” is also the album’s first (and most obvious) single. It’s a quick electro-rock stab in the eye with the breathy howl of former Kyuss lead singer, John Garcia, propelling the track down the rhythmic equivalent of a gigantic set of stairs, tossing growling guitar loops (laid down by Wes Borland, the former nerve center of Limp Bizkit) and jumbled beats into hurricane syncopation. Unfortunately, this is where the Method’s energy runs out.
The album was recorded in the duo’s (Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland) Glendale, California home studio, an electronically congested two-car garage. And after shelling out tunes to video games, commercials and blockbuster films, Jordan and Kirkland seem to be looking for more commercially viable tunes, blending simple house, distant snatches of soul and the drive of unadulterated rock into an advertising-friendly, all-too-familiar sound. Listening to the album in excess could lead you to believe you were participating in a Tomb Raider action sequence.
The album disappointingly doesn’t revert to the spirited and simple music of the Method’s breakout album Vegas that yielded the groups most inspired songs, “Busy Child” and “Keep Hope Alive.” Instead they opt for following the style of their successful but boring last album, Tweekend, whose cuts were dull enough to bludgeon traditional rave culture with rock songs hopelessly trying to incite tribal euphoria. Their team-up “Name of the Game” with Stone Temple Pilot’s Scott Weiland worked out best, but couldn’t save the album.
And as tight of a single as “Born Too Slow” may be, it can’t save the rest of Legion of Boom.
“I Know It’s You” is the closest the Crystal Method come to finding their old Vegas style with warbling robo voiceovers and tranced-out soul samples, but the beat feigns creativity and gets repetitive. It remains, however, a decent dance track.
“Realizer’s” repetition becomes maddening after a few rotations of the electro-house vox sample, and tracks like “True Grit” and “Broken Glass” are too overtly filler to be enjoyed. “Weapons of Mass Distortion” and “Bound Too Long” overpower the Method’s guest stars, Borland and San Francisco poet Hanifah Walidah respectively, with brainless pre-programmed electro-muscle. “The American Way” suffers a similar fate, when Rahzel’s emceeing loses its texture in a mumbling stew of vox and bass. And with track titles like “The American Way,” “Broken Glass” and “Weapons of Mass Distortion,” the Crystal Method refrain from getting politically charged, when it could have added a needed energy to their music. For now, the Crystal Method seems to be content cycling out repetitive commercial tunes and leaving originality to the underground.
