At this point I'd like to think I know exactly what I'm going to get from Finnish power metal band Battle Beast. However on Twilight Cabaret I did wonder exactly what I was listening too as it feels like Bonnie Tyler doing Black Lace but I guess that's all part of the continuing evolution of the band. Like the other Beast band that's an offshoot of this Beast band, there's a strong 80's vein and theatrical edge on the most recent records and Twilight Cabaret fits in with this well.
Here We Are is proudly wearing that synthy 80's vibe while Last Goodbye brings some wild, sleazy, street metal. Steelbound is 38 minutes of heavy metal party, the vocals of Noora Louhimo still as strong as ever, from the powerhouse choruses of driving opener The Burning Within as the symphonic march of instrumental The Long Road sets the tone for the thunderous battle metal of Blood Of Heroes, the synths coming back to the poppy Angel Of Midnight and bouncing Riders Of The Storm.
Did I know what to expect, with the exception of Twilight Cabaret, then yes, but it was still fun. There's a place for pop and synthy 80's sounds in power metal and while not every band should do it Battle Beast have blended it into their sound well over the past few records. With a UK tour coming up imminently, expect a lot of these tracks to be played, which is a good thing as this is a record of anthems that deserve the stage. 8/10
In the 80’s bands would blame labels or management, claiming they had no control over such things, but in this day and age adorning the results of your hard work with a piece of artwork with something cheesier than the combined body weight of the whole band with some ripe Allgäuer Emmentaler, Butterkäse or Cambozola has to be a deliberate decision. But in this supposedly enlightened decade, it's absolutely intended to scream where this band are coming from loud and proud, which in this case is probably somewhere around 1982.
To clarify, the artwork itself is of itself very high quality, but you can’t take a biker jacked clad, bare chested metal head protagonist, with Flying V held defiantly aloft, conveniently conducting a melodramatic lightning strike whilst perched on a rocky pinnacle surrounded by a giant snake and some chains seriously, but then we are not intended to. It is about ten clichs for the price of one…
The cover and the music within are intended to invoke an earlier age, where men were real men, guitar heroes walked the earth and giant rattlesnakes perched on mountains knew their place. To be fair to these guys, growing up in Leipzig in the former GDR means that they will have missed out on the whole 80’s NWOBHM influenced explosion of metal in Germany, even if they had all been old enough at the time (they aren’t), so its perfectly reasonable to take that era as the template and do it all fresh and real forty years later.
They are far from alone – there’s lots of youngsters doing the same thing, and the fact that bigger global reaching labels like Atomic Fire are picking up bands like Tailgunner shows that there is the hunger and the commercial market for it. They’ve only been together since 2019 but have an EP and another full length under their belts, and although to reach overseas I can see them building a fan base to match the likes of Tailgunner if their live shows can match the recordings.
On the subject of which, this hits the spot. With only eight tracks, none of which hang around, this really feels from another decade. They’ve adopted a no-frills production sound, which whilst a little fake does at least focus their energies well and means the songs have to stand up on writing and performance merit and not rely on fancy techniques. That said the instruments are all well-placed in the mix and there’s a strong as live feel to this which feels like the aural equivalent of drinking a bottle of Lucozade too quickly.
Even the well-crafted ballad Silent Tears has a controlled energy bubbling just under the surface that doesn’t pull its punches, whilst allowing the normally raw and ready vocalist Randy a moment of controlled, sustained and emotional delivery with a clear and well-delivered performance that indicates there’s some staying power in here. The album is brisk and too the point, filler-free and refreshingly indicative of a band that can produce the goods on demand, given they’ve managed no more than two years between releases. Let’s hope there’s a lot more to come. 8/10
Aeternia - Into The Golden Halls (Cruz Del Sur Music) [Matt Bladen]
German power metal with singer who varies between Dio and Hansi Kursch? You have my attention! Aeternia have only been a band for five years but they are already on their debut full length. So what does it sound like well in the PR they mention pre-symphonic Blind Guardian and Helloween, both are totally valid as Aeternia play what I would consider to be German heavy metal.
Galloping riffs, dual guitar harmonies, big epic, choruses filled with gang vocals and songs about mystical and historical fantasy, be that winged beasts on Dragon's Gaze or German folk heroes on Lay Of Hildebrand, they use their lyrics to tell stories and their music to get you fist in the air and your head banging.
The band decided to self produce this record and you can hear that they have put everything into it, from the blasting speed of Five Rode Forth to the marching beat of Trial By Fire And Water and the chest beating Blind Guardianisms of The Descendant, Aeternia have a very bright future ahead of themselves in the power metal field. 8/10
Meteora - Broken Mind (H-Music) [Simon Black]
This Hungarian Symphonic Metal outfit have been steadily realising material since 2014, with this EP being the second of a trilogy launched a few months back in August. There’s a lot of this sort of thing going on at the moment, and it does make economic sense. Producing and releasing a full-blown album is not the event that it used to be.
In a marketplace with increasingly attention-deficit audiences seemingly incapable of playing 40-60 minutes of music in one sitting, splitting things into EP’s make sense. A ten-track album requires a dedication and consistency that’s tough to maintain for both band and listener, but an EP needs a lot less material and allows a band to be more eclectic and experimental with their styles and not be tied down when spread out in this way. You can release three EP’s that all sound different that would sound messy as an album for example.
There’s the added advantage that the time-based production costs in the studio are a lot less this way, with the added advantage that effectively splitting an album’s worth of material into several discrete chunks allows bands to have something new to sell or promote and therefore get out on the road more frequently. The fact that they sell more physical units with the same margin (albeit a low one) is purely coincidental. Cynicism aside it makes a lot of sense and its also a great way to build an act’s profile, so whatever the motivation it seems to work to the advantage of all parties.
Symphonic Metal is having a hard time at the moment. I guess there’s only so many times you can stick an operatic female vocalist in front of a technically proficient Metal band without things sounding repetitive, especially since the progenitors of the style (Nightwish) seem to have an audience larger than that of the rest of the genre put together, so it’s refreshing when a band do it well. I’ve not come across Meteora before, and the first thing that strikes me is that they are one of the few acts in the genre that genuinely do.
Vocally there’s a good mix in here, with male voices both clean and extreme complementing Holló Noémi’s soprano peaks. Her voice is definitely on the cleaner end of things, and at least on this EP does not hit the rawer notes, leaving those to the boys. The mix works because it’s balanced three ways though, and she certainly has a lot of power in there.
Musically these tracks show a lot of oomph too, and unlike many acts in the genre maintain two guitars as well as the keys / orchestration. This means the overall sound is heavier and more powerful, even if there’s less rhythm / lead interplay, opting for well-crafted harmonic interplay and letting the keys take the lead role predominantly. The combined effect is a band with their own distinct sound, which in a genre with far too many indistinguishable acts is a breath of fresh air.
As an EP, it’s short and to the point, but feels like a well-crafted entity in its own right. Too many EP’s are just glorified singles with padding, but this has a strong identity of its own, and one that piques my interest enough to dig deeper into the back catalogue. 8/10
Here We Are is proudly wearing that synthy 80's vibe while Last Goodbye brings some wild, sleazy, street metal. Steelbound is 38 minutes of heavy metal party, the vocals of Noora Louhimo still as strong as ever, from the powerhouse choruses of driving opener The Burning Within as the symphonic march of instrumental The Long Road sets the tone for the thunderous battle metal of Blood Of Heroes, the synths coming back to the poppy Angel Of Midnight and bouncing Riders Of The Storm.
Did I know what to expect, with the exception of Twilight Cabaret, then yes, but it was still fun. There's a place for pop and synthy 80's sounds in power metal and while not every band should do it Battle Beast have blended it into their sound well over the past few records. With a UK tour coming up imminently, expect a lot of these tracks to be played, which is a good thing as this is a record of anthems that deserve the stage. 8/10
Sintage – Unbound Triumph (High Roller Records) [Simon Black]
I tried to encourage a publication that I used to contribute to run a Worst Metal Album of the Year award, as whether by accident or design cheesy and embarrassing cover art is still a going concern with the Metal genre.In the 80’s bands would blame labels or management, claiming they had no control over such things, but in this day and age adorning the results of your hard work with a piece of artwork with something cheesier than the combined body weight of the whole band with some ripe Allgäuer Emmentaler, Butterkäse or Cambozola has to be a deliberate decision. But in this supposedly enlightened decade, it's absolutely intended to scream where this band are coming from loud and proud, which in this case is probably somewhere around 1982.
To clarify, the artwork itself is of itself very high quality, but you can’t take a biker jacked clad, bare chested metal head protagonist, with Flying V held defiantly aloft, conveniently conducting a melodramatic lightning strike whilst perched on a rocky pinnacle surrounded by a giant snake and some chains seriously, but then we are not intended to. It is about ten clichs for the price of one…
The cover and the music within are intended to invoke an earlier age, where men were real men, guitar heroes walked the earth and giant rattlesnakes perched on mountains knew their place. To be fair to these guys, growing up in Leipzig in the former GDR means that they will have missed out on the whole 80’s NWOBHM influenced explosion of metal in Germany, even if they had all been old enough at the time (they aren’t), so its perfectly reasonable to take that era as the template and do it all fresh and real forty years later.
They are far from alone – there’s lots of youngsters doing the same thing, and the fact that bigger global reaching labels like Atomic Fire are picking up bands like Tailgunner shows that there is the hunger and the commercial market for it. They’ve only been together since 2019 but have an EP and another full length under their belts, and although to reach overseas I can see them building a fan base to match the likes of Tailgunner if their live shows can match the recordings.
On the subject of which, this hits the spot. With only eight tracks, none of which hang around, this really feels from another decade. They’ve adopted a no-frills production sound, which whilst a little fake does at least focus their energies well and means the songs have to stand up on writing and performance merit and not rely on fancy techniques. That said the instruments are all well-placed in the mix and there’s a strong as live feel to this which feels like the aural equivalent of drinking a bottle of Lucozade too quickly.
Even the well-crafted ballad Silent Tears has a controlled energy bubbling just under the surface that doesn’t pull its punches, whilst allowing the normally raw and ready vocalist Randy a moment of controlled, sustained and emotional delivery with a clear and well-delivered performance that indicates there’s some staying power in here. The album is brisk and too the point, filler-free and refreshingly indicative of a band that can produce the goods on demand, given they’ve managed no more than two years between releases. Let’s hope there’s a lot more to come. 8/10
Aeternia - Into The Golden Halls (Cruz Del Sur Music) [Matt Bladen]
German power metal with singer who varies between Dio and Hansi Kursch? You have my attention! Aeternia have only been a band for five years but they are already on their debut full length. So what does it sound like well in the PR they mention pre-symphonic Blind Guardian and Helloween, both are totally valid as Aeternia play what I would consider to be German heavy metal.
Galloping riffs, dual guitar harmonies, big epic, choruses filled with gang vocals and songs about mystical and historical fantasy, be that winged beasts on Dragon's Gaze or German folk heroes on Lay Of Hildebrand, they use their lyrics to tell stories and their music to get you fist in the air and your head banging.
The band decided to self produce this record and you can hear that they have put everything into it, from the blasting speed of Five Rode Forth to the marching beat of Trial By Fire And Water and the chest beating Blind Guardianisms of The Descendant, Aeternia have a very bright future ahead of themselves in the power metal field. 8/10
This Hungarian Symphonic Metal outfit have been steadily realising material since 2014, with this EP being the second of a trilogy launched a few months back in August. There’s a lot of this sort of thing going on at the moment, and it does make economic sense. Producing and releasing a full-blown album is not the event that it used to be.
In a marketplace with increasingly attention-deficit audiences seemingly incapable of playing 40-60 minutes of music in one sitting, splitting things into EP’s make sense. A ten-track album requires a dedication and consistency that’s tough to maintain for both band and listener, but an EP needs a lot less material and allows a band to be more eclectic and experimental with their styles and not be tied down when spread out in this way. You can release three EP’s that all sound different that would sound messy as an album for example.
There’s the added advantage that the time-based production costs in the studio are a lot less this way, with the added advantage that effectively splitting an album’s worth of material into several discrete chunks allows bands to have something new to sell or promote and therefore get out on the road more frequently. The fact that they sell more physical units with the same margin (albeit a low one) is purely coincidental. Cynicism aside it makes a lot of sense and its also a great way to build an act’s profile, so whatever the motivation it seems to work to the advantage of all parties.
Symphonic Metal is having a hard time at the moment. I guess there’s only so many times you can stick an operatic female vocalist in front of a technically proficient Metal band without things sounding repetitive, especially since the progenitors of the style (Nightwish) seem to have an audience larger than that of the rest of the genre put together, so it’s refreshing when a band do it well. I’ve not come across Meteora before, and the first thing that strikes me is that they are one of the few acts in the genre that genuinely do.
Vocally there’s a good mix in here, with male voices both clean and extreme complementing Holló Noémi’s soprano peaks. Her voice is definitely on the cleaner end of things, and at least on this EP does not hit the rawer notes, leaving those to the boys. The mix works because it’s balanced three ways though, and she certainly has a lot of power in there.
Musically these tracks show a lot of oomph too, and unlike many acts in the genre maintain two guitars as well as the keys / orchestration. This means the overall sound is heavier and more powerful, even if there’s less rhythm / lead interplay, opting for well-crafted harmonic interplay and letting the keys take the lead role predominantly. The combined effect is a band with their own distinct sound, which in a genre with far too many indistinguishable acts is a breath of fresh air.
As an EP, it’s short and to the point, but feels like a well-crafted entity in its own right. Too many EP’s are just glorified singles with padding, but this has a strong identity of its own, and one that piques my interest enough to dig deeper into the back catalogue. 8/10
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