Reviews: Battle Beast, Sworn Amongst, Arrival Of Autumn, Aton Five (Rich & Mark)

Battle Beast: No More Hollywood Endings (Nuclear Blast) [Rich]

Finnish power metal heroes Battle Beast return with album number five titled No More Hollywood Endings. The previous four albums have been the perfect mix of European power metal, 1980’s pop music and Eurovision camp that has endeared them to many.  Despite kicking out their main songwriter Anton Kabanen back in 2015, Battle Beast proved they hadn’t lost any of their potency with the success of 2017’s Bringer Of Pain album. The big question is can they repeat that success another time round? No More Hollywood Endings sees Battle Beast at a bit of a crossroads. The album has a more serious feel to it this time round with the band experimenting with their sound.  The big poppy hooks and choruses are on display but Battle Beast have seemed to want to go more a more dramatic and epic sound this time round especially with the incorporation of a symphonic sound most evident in the opening duo of Unbroken and the title track. There’s a definite leaning towards symphonic metal acts such as Nightwish and Sirenia but with the poppy hooks the band have become accustomed with. Also it wouldn’t be a Battle Beast album if it didn’t have a song that is gonna divide the fans down the middle and that song is Endless Summer which sees the band going further into pure pop territory than ever before.

The album is more varied in its first half and by the time epic ballad I Wish has finished it is back to the classic bouncy Battle Beast sound with a trio of songs - Raise Your Fists, The Golden Horde and World On Fire - that are pure power metal glory guaranteed to have people pumping their fists and banging their heads and have extreme metal elitists foaming at the mouth. No More Hollywood Endings is another class album by Battle Beast but is one that is going to be a bit of a grower with a lot of their fans. The band perform fantastically and of course it is all carried by the powerhouse vocals of Noora Louhimo who sounds better than ever on this album and is proving herself to be one of the best singers in the genre. No More Hollywood Endings is a mix of songs that shows the band expanding their capabilities but also showing what they do best.  Whilst not as immediate as previous albums this is bound to be another massive success for Battle Beast. 8/10

Sworn Amongst: Reclamation (Famined Records) [Mark]

Sworn Amongst are a band that have been traversing the pool of UK touring bands for a while, one I’ve seen live, one I’ve shared a stage with a few times, is it finally time for them to have the breakthrough they’re clearly hungry to achieve? This five track EP is the tenth release, one demo, four full length albums and four previous EPs before Reclamation, from the English five piece, sitting somewhere between metalcore and deathcore, with a smattering of djent, which is a departure in style from their earlier thrash leanings, the maturation of their sound is welcome, nice to hear a band who can develop and keep things fresh seventeen years after forming. Enslaved opens things up, the first thing you notice is how loud this release has been mastered, it’s a little jarring at first, but your ears do get acclimated to the wall of sound, after a brief ethereal build up, a riff with all the weight of a neutron star smacks you in the face, it’s like a statement that you’re getting into the sort of material that has taken the djent of about eight years ago, mixed it with some thrash leanings and years of studio experience, the only thing that’s missing is a catchy hook or chorus to really round this track out, the end breakdown is a lesson in heavy guitar and kick drum syncopation, a jolly good track.

Delusional picks right up where the opening track leaves off, there’s a guttural vocal at the start of the song that sounds dragged from the bowels of hell, the guitars in this track really bounce and the clean section at the end allows the next track to hit you in the face, Believe adds some space-synth noises over the top. Without checking, even though I did after thinking it, this is clearly the single of this EP, their website confirms that it’s the first video, a sing-along chorus, spacey noises, heavy, end breakdown all present and accounted for. Cleansing is fucking heavy, the opening riff has the sort of weight some bands can only ever hope of achieving, I just wish they’d stuck with the opening passage a bit longer, it’s gone before you can fully appreciate it, and that’s something I’ve noticed for the entire EP, the tracks are good but not super memorable, passages go by in a blur, the song structures are all similar, I feel like you could cut a section from one track and place it in any of the others and barely even notice.

Don’t get me wrong every track when taken as its own stand alone piece of music is good, with some astonishing pieces thrown in, but as a whole Reclamation almost sounds like five cuts of the same song. If you like Architects, Periphery or Monuments, you’ll like this, there are great moments everywhere on this punchy, short EP and if you’re a metalcore/djent aficionado then you’ll enjoy this release 7/10

Arrival Of Autumn: Harbinger (Nuclear Blast) [Mark]

If there’s one thing that’s very clear, the production of this album is pristine, every note audible, every guitar line perfectly in tune and not a note out of place, the drums are clear, clean and immaculate. Hurricane On The Horizon opens up the album, quick melodic intro with a build up and we’re into the meat of what Arrival Of Autumn are all about, heavy, complex guitar patterns, lots of kick drums and evolving drum patterns that drive the song forward, we also get our first glimpse of the vocal pattern that appears often throughout this release, a hardcore/metalcore shout followed up by very aptly performed clean vocal on the choruses, which is fine, but it is a clean vocal that will divide opinion, I don’t like it, but others will enjoy it I am sure, the chorus is catchy though and a few listens will have you humming or singing along, that’s for sure, so on that front it’s definitely a win.

End Of Existence picks the pace up a bit with a great intro build up followed by a great riff and drum combo that reminds me of some of the Gothenburg sounds from the early 00s, channeling some In Flames and early Soilwork, the chorus is great and I can see why they’ve been signed to Nuclear Blast. Stellar solo work by Brendan Anderson rounds out this track. Witness falls into the heavy/clean vocal pattern as mentioned previously, but it does contain possibly the best section of music on the entire album, roughly two minutes in after a couple of blistering leads a very heavy breakdown stomps its way through some brutal sounding drums and Jamison Frieson screaming “WITNESS” over and over. Old Bones - New Blood falls right into that melodic death metal sound that a lot of bands have tried to imitate and failed, but this is good, a very nice bounce leads the track and I can see the circle pits whirling around at some festivals in the near future.

It’s very clear that this five piece really know how to write a particular type of song, and they’ve been pushed by a fantastic producer to produce some of the catchiest metal I’ve heard in 2019, my only reservation is the album is very samey and the songs become a deluge of similar sounding cuts throughout, if this is a style of music you’re really into, it won’t bother you at all, but for the new or casual listener it’s a bit tiring to hear the same thing being thrown at you for ten songs. I did enjoy this album, it’s a very well produced, well written collection of songs and judged solely on this release Arrival Of Autumn have a bright future that will involve a heavy touring regime. 7/10

Aton Five: Solarstalgia (IndieGo Boom) [Mark]

This album is a great way to kick the week off, I absolutely love instrumental music, not that I hate singers, really, I don’t, I just enjoy it when the music is the sole focus, the energy the band has to produce to get by without vocals needs to be special. Aton Five from Russia dabble in a type of instrumental music I haven’t spent a great deal of time with until now, and I like the groove it fits into, spacey, vibey and 70s as hell. The Dreadnought opens up the album, synth noises, marching drumbeat and in 7/4, I think I am in for a treat here as these are all things I love, when odd meter, odd time or odd polyrhythms are used in music I find myself able to go back over and over again to try and pick out tricks that the writers used to keep a groove or pattern moving, even with odd numbers, it’s definitely a way of getting musos to revisit an album or piece of music, I don’t know how well that translates for people who don’t understand these concepts, but from a purely musical standpoint unless you’re listening for it, you might not even notice it in this track. My only criticism is that the track could have progressed outside of this musical pattern a little more and flourished because of it.

There is a great lead and build up towards the end, and this is definitely a good way to open the album, it lets you know exactly what you’re getting into. Did I mention that this album is 63 minutes long? With only 7 tracks? No, I definitely didn’t, but it most certainly is, which means there are some humongous tracks on here, Journey kicks in with a complete departure to the opening track, the inclusion of some jazzy piano lines and the lead synth really ups the bounce, the straight groove also gets the head nodding and the shoulders moving. It reminds me of Cream then it reminds me of Pink Floyd then it sounds like they’re drawing on the same influence pool as Opeth’s later material, which is no bad thing. Chain Of Events got me out of my chair to turn the volume up when I was on my first run through of this album, this rocking track has loads of energy then it breaks down into a section with so much depth and feel it’s hard to imagine most bands putting the two sections together, but Aton Five really pull it off well, there are some absolutely blistering solos rounding out this song and they deserve a special mention here as they really stand out.

Definitely a track I can see making it to a movie soundtrack or a game. Milky Way Incident is a 13 minute journey, like a cosmic orgasm of aural delights which twists and assaults from every angle, a complete overview of a band who are masters of their craft and my album highlight. Aton Five aren’t a band to shy away from more modern production tricks, the use of samples throughout the album is a great way to inject some human feel to this otherwise out of body otherworldly experience. The playing on Solarstalgia is absolutely immaculate and the production really lends to the immersion, this is an album that I think anyone can play and find something to enjoy, there are many layers of complex sounds that drive home the progressive and psych tendencies of a band who are clearly very talented and deserving of a more widespread appreciation. 9/10