By Rachel Henry
Look out metal heads, rock and roll underground’s He Is Legend is ready to head back to the studio.
After the 2009 release It Hates You, amidst swirling Internet rumours of problems with their label, Tooth and Nail Records, North Carolina’s He Is Legend took a musical sabbatical.
“To be honest, we never exactly broke up,” said Matt Williamson, He Is Legend’s bassist. “We just didn’t book any tours and weren’t ready to do a new album. We also didn’t dispute any rumours on the Internet that stated we were ‘broken up’ or ‘on hiatus.’ We never made a public decision on any of that. We just took a much-needed break.”
The band is presently unsigned, and for the time being, plans to stay that way as they work out the process of recording their next album.
“The game plan is simply to write and record a new album. Personally, I would love to stay unsigned,” Williamson said. “If there is any way for us to record and put out this record ourselves. … Release the record online (or) something similar, then that would be something that interests me over trying to get signed to a label, so they can fund our record and put it out, and I’ll owe them thousands of dollars for the next 10 years of my life.”
Putting out an album and touring is a costly endeavour and without a label to finance them can present a challenge, but He Is Legend remains undaunted.
“That’s not really on my mind right now,” Williamson said. “Shows in the local and regional area, sure, but as far as going out on a two-month-long tour, that’s not in my main focus just yet. Making this record is what we are going to focus all of our energy on.”
“We haven’t collectively written any full songs together yet. But we are just working out how we’re going to do this. How are we going to record? How are we going to put it out? The easy part is writing the music. We’re good at doing that together, but figuring out everything on our own is going to take some time.”
Lead vocalist Schuylar Croom echoed the sentiment of timeliness.
“We are taking our time working out a game plan on doing this record ourselves,” he said. “(We’re) so overwhelmed at the amount of interest from y’all!”
Though quiet on the touring front, gears have slowly been turning behind the scenes for He Is Legend.
“We played a show in December 2010 and one in October 2011. So I mean, we didn’t disband or break up. We were simply occupying ourselves with other things until we felt it was the right time to do something again,” Williamson said. “This feels like the right time.”
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