LEGION: “METAL IS NOT JUST SOMETHING YOU LISTEN TO. YOU HAVE TO LIVE IT.”
Legion have never been a band that measured their existence by the number of shows they played, the size of the stages they stood on, or whatever trends happened to dictate at the time. Their roots reach back to the first half of the 1990s, through the Krematörr and Gutted eras to the name Legion, which the band has used since 1996. From the very beginning, something much deeper has remained essential: the need to create their own music, search for their own expression, and refuse to let anyone else define what extreme metal should look like.
At the end of 2025, Legion released the album Dysanthropos, a record they themselves also see as a time capsule of the previous decade of their work. Alongside the current trio of Z, Interdictvs and Miško, it carries within it the band's long history, changes in their approach to songwriting, and themes concerning human nature, power, fear, responsibility and a critical re-examination of accepted meanings.
In this interview for Rebel Sound, we return to Legion's roots, the changes in the line-up, their own UndergroundMania event, the creation of Dysanthropos and their collaboration with Martin "Holly" Hollander. We also talk about the very essence of the underground, the authenticity of live performance, and what has kept the band alive for almost three decades. The answer may be simpler than it seems: as long as the need to create remains, Legion's story is not over.
Legion's roots reach back to the first half of the 1990s, when the original formation gradually evolved through Krematörr and Gutted before becoming Legion, a name you have used since 1996. What was the real moment of birth of the band as you understand it today? What did you want to express through music back then, and which of those original values are still alive in Legion today?
Greetings to Rebel Sound. I once wrote a more detailed account of the band's distant history in an interview for the now-defunct Hardmusicbase website (we will repost the interview on our Facebook soon), but I suppose the more usual path is that somebody becomes fascinated by an instrument, starts playing it and then looks around for people to join forces with and turn it into something more. We did it the other way around. First we formed a band, went "dzh dzh dzh" with our mouths, beat pillows with wooden spoons, yelled "Satan kills, we're all gonna die," and recorded it on a cassette recorder. Only after that did we start thinking that maybe we could do it on actual instruments. So I actually see several births: first the Krematörr era, then the Gutted era of learning by trial and error what playing music even meant, and finally the point where it became, okay, this is actually music — the Legion era.
So those original values that distinguished Legion from Gutted the pure desire to express ourselves through music, the move away from copying riffs towards our own approach, and thematically from describing social issues towards criticism of religion and the necessity of absolute personal responsibility, all wrapped in a simple pop-song framework I think all of that still survives today in a certain abstract form. And of course it has always been seasoned with more than a small amount of blastbeats. We are not a funeral band, after all.
Your journey has included periods of intense touring as well as phases when the band's activity slowed down considerably. What was happening inside Legion during those years, and what made the band breathe again instead of becoming a closed chapter? Did that experience teach you to distinguish between a temporary crisis and a genuine ending?
From the perspective of an outside observer, that is a perfectly logical way to look at the band's existence. From my perspective, though, I have never perceived anything like growth, decline, crisis, ending or rebirth. I am not blessed with a particularly strong need for social interaction, but I do have an enormous need for self-expression, and that has manifested itself through creating music. All the phenomena you describe follow from that. Periods of heavy gigging simply depend on whether somebody is actively taking care of it. Shows do not book themselves. In the early phase of the band, Touster was the one who dealt with it more systematically, so there was more intensive gigging. Then came finishing school, starting work, changing priorities and, as a consequence, a gradual decline in concerts. Later Pestis appeared, started dealing with it systematically again, and the live activity picked up once more. I basically exist as an entity with a very strong inner need to create collectively, and whether there is an audience or not is almost secondary. And I am incredibly lucky that there are still people around me who see it in a similar way. The point is to do something, to create something. If we also manage to present it publicly, that is a beautiful bonus. If it were primarily about being on stage, you would play in a tribute band instead of creating your own music. So from my perspective, something like a crisis or an ending does not really exist. It simply flows back and forth between what you might call a live phase and a studio phase.
Back in the 1990s, in an interview for Whiplash magazine, we said that Legion would exist until the last star falls from the sky largely under the influence of the film Caligula. And so far, nothing has changed about that.
Legion's line-up has changed significantly several times over the years, and since 2023 you have been operating as the trio Z, Interdictvs and Miško. How did Interdictvs joining the band change the internal chemistry, the songwriting process and the division of responsibility? What does a new member need to accept from the band's history, and where do they need the freedom to bring in their own personality?
Simply put, from excellent to even better. Touster and Dani, as well as Pestis and Miško, were and are good people. Exactly the same can be said of Interdictvs. The old saying applies everywhere: where there is a will, there is a way. The three of us are different beings in different life situations, but our paths crossed, and the will to do something together connects us and gives rise to something that expresses itself through Legion.
For a long time now, our music has mainly emerged from the interaction between me and the drummer previously Dani, now Miško. Interdictvs joining the band has not disrupted those established tracks yet, although I sincerely hope that one day this will change as well. After joining, he also realised that mere existence in itself may not be enough and started taking much more care of the band's social media. For that he has my deep respect and gratitude. And I definitely must not forget his wonderful wife Denisa, who helps us as well.
Since 1998, you have organised your own UndergroundMania event, which also originated as a space for gig exchanges and supporting other bands. How has the Czech metal underground changed during that time from the perspective of both musicians and organisers? What helps the scene most today, and what weakens it, even though bands rarely talk about it openly?
Yes, we organise events, although, as you correctly noticed earlier, sometimes we are more active and sometimes less so. Hopefully it will pick up again soon. As far as development goes, for me it is still more or less the same at least in the underground. It is still about people's passion for music: creating it, presenting it and listening to it. The technical possibilities have improved and standards of facilities have moved forward, but fundamentally not that much has changed.
What helps the scene, what weakens it? I have no idea. The scene is still here, it was here and it will be here. Digitalisation and the internet have changed a lot, but is that a bad thing? Not in my view. Has it changed live music somehow? Again, not in my view. In the underground, everything is about passion for music. Whoever wants to make a living from it becomes more professional; whoever does not simply plays and is happy. That is the essence of the underground.
Perhaps one small lament at the end: there seem to be fewer young bands than when we started.
Legion's discography runs from the recordings Normal Is Not to Believe..., Christians and Death Is Not Enough through Xenophoby and the EP Let Them Hate Us... to the new album Dysanthropos. When you listen back to that journey, where do you hear the band's unchanging musical DNA, and where can you most clearly hear that you have evolved as musicians and as people?
I see the most significant progress in pretty much everything both playing technique and the approach to songwriting. Simply put, the more you know how to do, the more possibilities you have. Especially after Miško joined, we started approaching things more responsibly. Before, it was more like messing around, throwing a few riffs one after another is it okay? Fine, done. Now you play with a motif more, examine it in different forms and think much more about the feeling it creates. And of course it also helps that you actually learn how to play.
What remains, on the other hand, is the need to create a straightforward pop song that tears your head off. Any musical complication interrupts the drive and reduces the pressure.
Dysanthropos was released in December 2025, roughly ten years after the EP Let Them Hate Us..., and represents a full-length studio statement by the current incarnation of Legion. Why did the road to this album take so long, and what was the moment when you decided the material should no longer remain in the rehearsal room? What did you refuse to rush during the making of the record, even if it meant waiting longer?
Legion has one peculiar trait: the ability to do almost everything a little differently from how it is supposedly meant to be done. In the case of recordings, for example, we only go into the studio when the material we have already been playing live needs to be preserved in time, rather than recording it first and presenting it afterwards. That is why the album contains pieces that are even ten years old. So besides capturing the current live form of Legion, it is also a kind of time capsule of our creative work over the last decade. Apart from the song Dysanthropos, all the other tracks had already been part of the live set for a shorter or longer period.
Creating each song is always a process of several weeks, sometimes even months, before the basic rough form is polished into its final shape. And even then, a year later, we sometimes still change something. The lyrics always come last and actually alter the original song a little further, because they add another rhythmic and melodic layer.
The very title Dysanthropos, together with songs such as When All Is Too Human, As Long As They Fear Us and About Ressentiment, opens up themes of human nature, fear, power and resentment. Was the album created as a consciously interconnected statement, or did its common conceptual thread only become apparent in retrospect? Which question about humanity or society haunted you the longest while writing the lyrics?
As I mentioned above, the album is essentially a closing chapter of our creative work over the last decade, so logically it was not conceived as a thematically conceptual album. Rather, that connection emerged almost by itself, because over a longer period of time one keeps dealing with existential questions, will and manifestations of power, whether you yourself are your own greatest monster or perhaps the opposite. All of this is presented in a somewhat aphoristic form. For example, "Fall" deals with life and mortality as a transformation into another form of life essentially, life itself is immortal and only takes on different forms while at the same time expressing the individual's need to remain in their current form, captured in the refrain's aphorism: "Let me be immortal… at least for a day."
Most of the songs are actually connected by a long-term concept of overturning established meanings or interpreting something from the opposite side to what is customary. Take "Dysangelium," for example: it is the classic Gospel story, but viewed through the question of whether what it brings is truly good, and whether those commandments are not in fact a cage.
Dysanthropos also revisits the song Twilight of the Idols, an earlier version of which dates back to the period of the mini-promo of the same name. Why did you decide to reopen this particular composition? What does an older song need to have in order to deserve a new life, and when would it be more honest to leave it as a document of its time?
That song had been part of the live set for more than seventeen years and underwent a more significant rearrangement after Miško joined in 2010, so including it on the album was a completely natural way of connecting the older Legion with the present-day band. In a certain sense, it is also a farewell to one era of the band.
The album was created at HollyCross Studio with Martin "Holly" Hollander, who was involved in recording, mixing and production, and also contributed a guitar solo to Fall. How did the dialogue work between his outside perspective and your own idea of Legion's sound? At what point did he help you uncover something that you could no longer hear because you were too close to your own music?
We have known Holly for a very long time, being from the same region, so working with him is completely trouble-free. For one thing, we had already recorded the EP Let Them Hate Us... with him, which was basically his first production. For another, he is the kind of person who can gently get more out of you than you think you have in you. Over the ten years since our first collaboration, he has also progressed enormously, and because he has known us for a long time, there was not much we needed to discuss. He more or less knew what he would do his own way and where we should stay out of it, and where he should leave space for us or push us further so that the production would best reflect the spirit of Legion and the current songs.
Because everything was recorded on our own instruments drums, cymbals, guitars and amps the sound basically corresponds to what we are used to in the rehearsal room and at concerts. Professional production was added to that, and the result was already very close to what both we and he had imagined. Why invent something for a band that the band simply is not?
One of his great strengths is that he does not fix what is not broken and only suggests pushing things further where it actually benefits the whole. He wants to record the band as it really is, not record Holly's variation on that band. I identify with that approach very strongly. Another fantastic thing about him is post-production. We primarily do not use samples, but I know that a studio recording is a space where you can do more than in the rehearsal room or live. So I have ideas about where to strengthen a song, add something and make it more powerful. You only need to describe the idea to him, and within a few minutes the result is exactly what belongs there.
On the new album, Z is credited not only with the lyrics, but also with the cover artwork, design and part of the production. What advantages come from having one person hold such a large part of the final vision, and what risks come with it? Who in the band is most effective at saying that a particular idea is no longer serving the song, but only the author's ego?
I have basically been doing it this way since the very beginning of Krematörr, so it feels natural to me and I do not think about it very much. Apart from the lyrics, where nobody really interferes too much, I always put everything up for discussion with the rest of the band, so as a whole it is always something the entire band identifies with. I hope that this approach eliminates all the risks. As I wrote above, it is similar with the music. The creation of every song is a longer process in which the final shape is tuned collectively, so the result is always something we all identify with. Everyone in the band has already been through quite a lot, we are all somehow tuned to the same frequency, so I live in the belief that we know what we want and what works for us in a particular song and what does not.
The official video for When All Is Too Human introduced the new album before its release. How do you translate the darkness and intensity of Legion's music into a visual form and a live performance so that it does not become mere decoration around the songs? What should a person feel after your concert, even if they did not know a single lyric beforehand?
Aggression, heaviness, sheer force those are probably the first feelings that come to mind. That is how we want to come across. Personally, I like it when the visual side corresponds to the music. Ours is, I think, rather minimalist, but it fully does the job: just from the way we step onto the stage, the fan should already know what is about to happen. The visual side can help the music a great deal. It should not be neglected.
For me, visuals are not just about putting on costumes and building some scenery. An important part of the visual side is playing well live and being able to express as much of your music as possible through posture, gestures and non-verbal communication. I hope people go to concerts not only to listen to music, but also to absorb the feeling of live performance and the character of the people playing it. They can put on a CD at home. It is simply a kind of honesty in the performance when someone doing something on stage actually believes in it and lives it.
Legion have been part of the underground for almost three decades without adapting their identity to passing trends. What does genuine progress for the band mean to you today if it does not have to be measured by popularity or the size of the stage? When you look back in a few years at the period following the release of Dysanthropos, what would you like to consider its most important consequence?
It is hard to guess how one will look at all of this in a few years. I hope it will move us forward again musically, personally and in terms of opportunities. Ideally, we will cross another boundary that we had not reached before. But the important thing is to remain happy while doing it, to do things because we enjoy them, not because we have to. That would be nice. And I hope the next music we create will once again be a piece of our souls captured in a moment, rather than merely a repetition of what has already been done.
Finally, the floor is entirely yours, without any limitations. What would you like to say to the people who have shared a large part of Legion's long history with you, to the new generation of extreme metal fans, and to the readers of Rebel Sound music magazine?
To all our current and future fans, thank you for your support and thanks to Rebel Sound as well. Metal is not just something you listen to. You have to live it.
This interview with Legion confirms that longevity in the underground does not have to mean merely surviving through inertia. In their case, it is more about an uninterrupted need to create something, to push their own possibilities further, while never losing sight of the reason the band was formed in the first place. Dysanthropos therefore does not feel like a look back at the past or a closed chapter, but rather like a snapshot of one particular moment on a journey that is still continuing.
And perhaps that is precisely Legion's greatest strength. They do not play because they have to meet the expectations of a scene, but because music remains their natural form of self-expression. Back in the 1990s, they said that Legion would exist until the last star fell from the sky. After almost three decades, a new album and a continuing desire to create, there is still no sign that the last star is about to fall.
Denča
