Bloodstock Open Air continues to close in with day tickets releasing their at 9am tomorrow, 30th June! Weekend tickets are apparently selling faster than ever this year and may well sell out entirely before the festival weekend, so don’t delay if you want to guarantee a spot at the UK’s best metal festival!Continue reading
Bloodstock Open Air 2017 is coming up fast with just under 7 weeks to go for the festival first band to plug in and rock! The fest has added more bands to the bill including Havok, Fallujah, Shrapnel, Bloodoath, Criminal and more!Continue reading
After tours around the globe, Kamelot will return to North America with Delain and Battle Beast in 2018. Continue reading
Bloodstock Open Air is fast approaching and the fest has added a bevy of new bands. The infamous BOA club nights are also back, and have grown to 26 more nights. Details below: Continue reading
The long running New England Metal And Hardcore Festival held its 19th annual event recently and the lineup was excellent. As usual, fans came from all of New England and even further reaches of musicdom to hangout and rock at the grand old lady of music venues in Massachusetts, The Worcester Palladium in Worcester, MA. Hillarie Jason covered the festival once again for Ghost Cult and shot the awesome pictures for this piece! Continue reading
As spring turns to summer Bloodstock 2017 is approaching fast. The festival has added new bands to the lineup including Devilment, Battle Beast, Devil’s Playground and more for this years’ fest taking place at Catton Park.Continue reading
The long running New England Metal And Hardcore Festival returns for a 19th time with Testament, Sepultura, Prong, Kublai Khan, The Last Ten Seconds Of Life, Varials, Left Behind, No Zodiac, and Precious on Friday and Sabaton, Katatonia, Hammerfall, Amorphis, Caspian, Delain, Swallow The Sun, Battle Beast, Leaves Eyes, and Circuit Of Suns.
. More bands TBD.Continue reading
Battle Beast, by TJ Fowler
Helsinki’s epic heavy metallers Battle Beast have started out strong in 2015 by releasing a new album, and touring relentlessly. On the road supporting Unholy Savior (Nuclear Blast) which dropped in January, the band has been supporting the likes of Sabaton and Delain among others. They are just getting warmed up, and the live arena is where they flourish as a group. Catching them in a more intimate setting close to home, TJ Fowler shot the band at Henry’s Pub in Kuopio for this dynamic photo set for Ghost Cult.
Battle Beast, by TJ Fowler
Battle Beast, by TJ Fowler
Battle Beast, by TJ Fowler
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Ever since Hammerfall brought Glory To The Brave (via Nuclear Blast) by damn near single-handedly re-establishing traditional metal as a valid concern some 18 years ago, the traditional types of metal have existed in a vacuum. While even the most conservative of genres, thrash, updated itself in several directions via the urbanization and gangsterization of a Machine Head, or branched out into progressive and technical fields of your Voivod’s and Heathen’s, traditional metal (a sub-genre incorporating “HM”, Speed and Power Metal) seems happy to regurgitate the same tropes and styles ad infinitum.
I guess the clue is in the tag “traditional”…
Finland’s Battle Beast on their third album Unholy Saviour (Nuclear Blast) tick many boxes of the Speed Power Metal sub-genre confidently, continuing exactly where their second, self-titled album, finished; post-Stratovarius hard-rocking refrains punctuated with pacy Accept-influenced riffing, and peppered with rapid bursts of Pyry Vikki’s double-bass drum hurtle. Added to those ingredients are Noora Louhimo’s vocals, not a million miles away from Sister Sin’s Liv Jagrell (a band that Battle Beast share several aural similarities with) pitching from punchy mid-range to a powerful throaty higher register that give the band their quasi-distinctiveness and a USP.
As the album unfolds, it’s clear Battle Beast have three song types, the Symphonic Hard Rocker, such as opener ‘Lion Heart’, the ‘Freewheel Burning’ Speed Metal anthem of a ‘Speed And Danger’ and the softer, more delicate power ballad, of which ‘Sea of Dreams’ displays subtlety and grace and a softer tone to Noora’s voice, in a track that, while obvious in its dynamic climb, works despite its’ genericises.
With sprinkles of keyboards and dual guitars driving duelling descants, make no mistake the term derivate isn’t always a negative thing as Battle Beast do exactly what they set out to do, and this is a collection of well-crafted Hard Rocking Power Metal songs. The fact that there is nothing novel or innovative doesn’t have to put you off, it’s just a matter of whether you have room in your collection for an album that does exactly what you expect it to, that will share characteristics with several of its bed-fellows and is, ultimately, the very definition of “if you liked this band before, you’ll like this, if you didn’t there’s nothing on here that’ll change your mind”.
7.0 / 10
STEVE TOVEY