Legion

H

eavy metal band Legion formed in 1979 as the idea of Oleg Tsaryov (bass). The early music style of the group resembled Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. Current geo-political issues aside, those of a certain age 'vintage' will remember back when Russia called itself the Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to be precise). When one thinks of the USSR, one is not reminded of heavy metal, but heavy metal did exist and several of those bands survived into modern time and the change over from USSR to Russian Federation, Legion is one of them.

The main themes of their lyrics were history, fantasy and heroism. They played a lot of club concerts and became a cult group in the middle of 1980s. A disagreement over the band's musical style after a USSR tour in their early days almost destroyed the band but the result would see them adopt a power metal stance and performing their own music resulting in the Knights of Cross (1994) under the line-up of Stanislav Kozlov (bass), Alexey Bulgakov (vocals), Yury Kryukov (guitars) and Konstantin Fedotov (drums), but for the follow-up, 1980-1987 (1997), only Alexey Bulgakov and Alexey Chernyshev performed everything.

Dmitry Krivenkov (drums) and Vyacheslav Molchanov (guitars) then joined the team for Give Me a Name (1999), while Andrey Zvyozdny took guitars for Near the Window (2000) and Prophecy (2001).

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