Battle Beast - No More Hollywood Endings

This would've died in The Eclipse

I know I just recently reviewed Battle Beast's self titled sophomore album, and I stand by my assertion that they were damn great pop metal with enough bite to really stick with you despite their bread and butter being cheesy 80s dorkery.  I didn't really touch on it in too much depth there, but it's worth noting that throughout their first three albums, guitarist Anton Kabanen was the sole songwriter and lyricist.  Literally no other members wrote anything if I understand correctly, they were more or less just following his lead.  And then, for reasons that I don't think were ever really made public, he was unceremoniously booted from his own band, and the rest of the guys decided to truck on without the only guy who seemed to know what he was doing.  Maybe he was a control freak and they actually wanted to contribute, I have no idea.  I just know that Bringer of Pain was very obviously a huge step down from the previous three albums that made me fall in love with this stupid band.  Battle Beast was always formulaic, but that one really just felt like the band plugging in components into the slots where they were "supposed" to fit based on what Anton had done up until that point.  There were still some solid songs here and there (the title track is the lone fast metal song and it was good, and I'll stick up for "Familiar Hell" all damn day based on how infectiously catchy it was) but it was a clear step down.

However, I'm willing to give them time to adjust and find their own footing.  They were scrambling trying to do it on their own for the first time, surely they just needed an album to adjust.

Yeah that didn't happen.

No More Hollywood Endings, the band's fifth album, fourth with Noora on vocals, and second without Anton doing all the work, is an absolute fucking travesty.  If you thought the last album was on autopilot, this one is the part where the plane gets struck by lightning and plunges into a mountainside.  This is the sound of a band that is so clearly not trying that it's almost heartbreaking.  Or... well, maybe they are trying, but they're not aiming for the same targets they used to.

It's fine for a band to evolve of course, but you really can't be shocked to discover that an old fan like me thinks this is a fucking embarrassment.  This is pure, unabashed, shameless, cheap, idiotic, cynical corsetcore from start to finish.  All of that attitude and swagger they used to carry in addition to the inoffensive pop is completely washed away, replaced with nothing except weak non-riffs, drums that might as well be Preset #1 on a cheap keyboard, and lame vocals.  Every single song here, with a whopping two exceptions, sounds like that one shitty band that Anette Olzon formed after she was kicked out of Nightwish.  Everything is played at the same tempo, with the same chugging 80s glam riffs, with the same focus-tested vocal melodies, everything is just tailor made specifically to rack up huge hits on Youtube thanks to a thumbnail that invariably features Noora's cleavage (side note, I wrote that sentence based on years of Nuclear Blast and Napalm's lesser bands hitting huge numbers for that exact reason, but decided to double check before making that claim here since Battle Beast never really played up the sexuality despite having a female singer but hey whaddaya know the video for Eden is advertised with the exact shot I was imagining). 

It's really clear now that Battle Beast doesn't really want to be a metal band anymore and are aiming for genuine mainstream success, but before that happens they're going to need to change their name or something, because there is neither battle nor beast here.  The pop elements are no longer mere elements, they are the entire base of the songs now, with whatever metal remains being tertiary bits like a guitar solo here or a curse word there, but this is pretty nakedly just 80s pop/glam with nothing else behind it.  It's a shameless and unimaginative throwback played with zero conviction or adrenaline, it's just tracing old pictures and coloring inside the lines.  Bringer of Pain had this same problem at times, but at least the fucking hooks were good and tracks like "Straight Through the Heart", "King for a Day", and "Familiar Hell" still held on to some of that Billy Idol styled rebellious attitude to help give it an edge.  This time?  Absolutely fucking not.  There are a whopping two songs that are actually alright, and I'd seriously consider giving this hollow piece of shit a zero if it wasn't for them.  "Piece of Me" is the one time they got the glam right, sounding like a slightly more raucous than average party tune that calls to mind something like Guns n' Roses, and "The Golden Horde" is the lone power metal track, with some actual god damned adrenaline and a tempo above a standard 120bpm.  It may not truly convey Batu Khan's ferocity within the Mongol Empire but it sounds like fuckin' Slayer compared to shit like the title track and "The Hero".  The whole thing is just loaded with feckless nonsense that sounds like it's taking a real shot for radio airplay but forgot to actually be good in the process.  I guess "World on Fire" isn't the worst thing either, it at least sounds like a Battle Beast song, albeit a shitty pop one that would've been the worst one on any of the Anton albums.

I've saved the worst for last though, and that is, without even a moment's hesitation, "Endless Summer".  I genuinely don't know what the fuck they were thinking with this one.  People keep calling this one "80s pop" but I'm gonna have to call bullshit on even that.  Pop in the 80s is generally remembered (at least by me) as bombastic and silly.  Prince and Madonna were larger than life superheroes where every new release was a big event.  "Endless Summer"?  No, this sounds like fucking One Direction and I'm not even exaggerating with that.  It's the kind of gormless pedantry that a Disney tween or somebody who places 4th on American Idol goes on to make.  This kind of wispy, breezy, smiley shitheap has no fucking place even on an album as doinky and inoffensive as this.  It's some sort of midpoint between modern country music and a weak pop ballad that hovers around the bottom of the Hot 100 for a week before everybody realizes it sucks and forgets about it.  It was hate-on-first-listen and it is by a cosmic longshot the worst fucking song the band has ever written.  Even for Finland, this is fucking embarrassing garbage.

There isn't even a Berserk song this time!  Unless "Bent and Broken" is meant to be the scene with Griffith and Casca in the camp after The Band of the Hawk broke him out of the dungeon and directly preceding The Eclipse.  And if that's the case it's even worse than the previous worst Berserk song, "Touch in the Night".  Fuck this whole album.

I don't know who this album is supposed to appeal to, because it certainly isn't Battle Beast fans.  I know that because I am a Battle Beast fan who has a higher tolerance for pop than most metalheads, and even I can't stomach this weak bullshit.  This is so many steps backwards that the band is now miles and miles and miles behind where they started.  They're not even in the same country anymore.  Even the good moments are too little too late, and completely ineffectual in the face of the crushing monolith of boring corsetcore pop nonsense that the rest of the album embodies.  I have nothing good to say about this.  I can't even recommend the good songs in good faith because the rest of the album is so fucking bad.  At the time of writing this, the first track has around 20,000 plays on Spotify, and the last song has barely 9,000.  Over half of the people who started this album couldn't bring themselves to finish it.  It's so fucking bad, I'm in awe.


RATING: 4%

Battle Beast - Battle Beast

I've got the Guts to fight the fight

I've been a pretty vocal defender of Battle Beast for years now, but I've never actually put it all into a real review until today.  I think the weird thing about my fandom of the band is that I really don't seem to like them all that much.  I have more complaints about the band in general than I do praises, but for some reason I find myself listening to them all the fucking time.  With their fifth album coming out later this year, and the fact that I've spent the last few days glued to my TV playing Berserk and the Band of the Hawk, I feel like this is as good a time as any to cover my favorite release, their self titled album from 2013.

To get the bad shit out of the way first, the band has, from day one, always been as shallow as an inflatable kiddie pool and about exactly as cheap.  There are no surprises on any album, and their strict adherence to pop structuring can make it tiring to sit through entire albums.  They are very Sabaton-esque in riffs being the secondary focus by a transdimensional mile to the melodies.  The guitars barely matter here, it's all about the keyboard melodies and the vocals, and both are focused around doofy arena pop and that can be a huge turnoff for a lot of people.  The vocals can get to be grating at times as well, though they usually take center stage for a reason.  Nitte Valo had a lot of excellent grit in her voice, and ever since her departure and replacement by Noora Louhimo they've taken a shift towards the more melodic side of things, which Noora excels at, but when she tries to do the more Valo-ish screams she just sounds like she's doing a growly parody of a bad metal singer.  This album has a great example with "Let It Roar", where the chorus sounds like a literal child screaming impotently about whatever the hell it is that kids scream about.

As for the good stuff, well... it's basically all the same stuff.  Sabaton may suck at formulaic pop metal but Battle Beast absolutely fucking kills it.  Guitarist Anton Kabanen is the sole songwriter an lyricist, so for all intents and purposes Battle Beast is a solo project with five extra cronies doing his bidding (at least up through Unholy Savior, at which point he was kicked out of his own band and went on to form Beast in Black, which is... just the same fucking band with different members).  If his body of work is anything to go by, he is a man of very limited interests.  Every single song he writes combines exactly two broad influences: 80s arena metal like Judas Priest or Accept and 80s popular music as a broad spectrum.  Every single lyric he's ever written is based on sci-fi novels, hopelessly vague 80s cliches like love and rebellion, and the ultraviolent anime from 1997, Berserk.  I say the anime and not the manga because throughout his career between his two bands, he's only ever touched on the Golden Age arc that the anime covers, when the manga it's based on has been running continuously for like 28 fucking years and has way more material to draw from.  Not really a problem per se, but it shows his hand a bit and would allow for more self-serious geeks to gatekeep the dude.  I've tried reading it myself and that shit is so dense that I don't blame the dude for struggling to get past the first ten trillion pages.

I highlight the narrow focus because I can easily see how it could be a problem for some, but frankly I think this allows the band to attack with a laser-fine point and it works to their advantage here.  It starts with a bit of a stumble with "Let It Roar" but after that it just hits like a dozen tracks in a row of Billy-Idol-meets-Screaming-for-Vengeance goodness and it's a fuckin' riot.  Anton is the main man here, but he's not stupid, he knows Noora is the highlight.  She's a twelve foot tall Amazonian valkyrie with lungs of leather and unlimited attitude and you'd be an absolute fool to bury her beneath your synthy cheese instead of letting her stand on top of it and scream it at the listeners with a million times galeforce ten.  She commands the hell out of tracks like "Machine Revolution", "Raven", and "Black Ninja".  She gets comparisons to Doro a lot simply for the fact that she's a woman and sings with a lot of power instead of trying to sound "pretty", but that's really not quite accurate.  I mentioned Priest and Accept up there because she really does sound like if Udo had Halford's range when she's belting out at max power.  Just listen to the best track on display, "Fight, Kill, Die".  She not only opens it with the Wilhelm Scream of Metal (not coincidentally used by both of the main metal influences on "Fast as a Shark" and "Ram It Down") but she somehow maintains that manic intensity throughout the runtime, closing on one of the most bombastically triumphant out-choruses of the decade.  She really was the best possible replacement for Valo, without a doubt.

I wish I could describe the music beyond what I've already said, but it's hard considering how shallow it is.  Namedropping Billy Idol wasn't random.  I fucking love Billy Idol in his prime and Battle Beast, whether knowingly or not, kind of carries the legacy from the Rebel Yell era.  Idol was pure pop with a punk edge/attitude and Battle Beast does the same with with a metal attitude.  They mostly stick to a palatable mid pace but load each and every song with the biggest god damned choruses they can manage, and that's really where the pop influence shines the brightest.  Try to deny the sheer over the top ridiculousness of "Black Ninja".  That's really just all this is, 80s pop music with metal riffs, loads of solos, and mega dorky synths.  This is probably the reason that "Fight, Kill, Die" stands out so much.  It's by far the most overtly metal song on the album, cranking the tempo up to its peak and packing in more riffs-per-square-minute than anywhere else.  As much as I love the pure pop cheese of "Out on the Streets", it just doesn't hold a candle to the searing metal assaults of "Machine Revolution" and "Fight, Kill, Die". 

I think that's why Battle Beast stands out so much compared to their biggest contemporary, Sabaton.  Not only are the hooks just way better in general, but small things like having a vocalist who actually kicks ass and a few scattered undeniably metal tracks here and there really help add some true identity to the synth-laden bounciness that dominates both bands.  The actual depth it adds is almost negligible, but it does help it from wearing out its welcome (this has become the band's biggest problem in recent years).  This isn't a perfect album by any means.  Some songs are just completely inconsequential (who the hell even remembers "Over the Top" or "Into the Heart of Danger"?) and even the good songs repeat themselves within a few minutes of each other ("Raven" and "Rain Man" use literally the exact same chorus hook), but overall this damn stupid album is just a really fun romp and I can't get enough of it.  Fight me.


RATING: 83%

Dynazty - Firesign

Actually pretty de-fec-tive

Without actually looking at any stats, I'm willing to bet with a pretty major degree of certainty that this is my most listened-to album of the last month, hell maybe even over the course of the entire year.  I've been listening to Dynazty's third album (actually their sixth but to my knowledge they've pretty much retconned everything prior to Renatus out of existence), Firesign, on a nearly constant loop for an embarassingly long time now.  I've been passing up other assuredly great releases that have the potential to completely blow me away because I keep coming back to this.  The reason this is notable is because I'm not actually listening to it because I love it so much.  No, I can't kill this album because for the fucking life of me I can't decide whether I love or hate it, because I'm pretty sure I feel both with equal intensity.

See, Dynazty's last album, Titanic Mass, was exactly as the title indicated.  It was a huge album, with skyscraper sized hooks being thrown at you from all directions.  It was a shallow and basic album but these Swedes were just really god damned good at focusing all of their energy into these gargantuan anthems with rousing choruses, incredible vocals, and surprisingly meaty riffage.  The whole thing took on this form of a dumb arena metal band if all of the members were sentient guitars made of pure Kobe beef.  I loved it, I still love it, I spin it just as much now as I did two years ago, "Untamer of Your Soul" is one of the most finely-tuned expressions of pure triumphant uplifting glory I've heard in years.  That song is what plays during my training montage before the big karate tournament.  FILL YOUR HEEEEART WITH GASOLIIIINE!

And now here's Firesign, and it really sounds like three different bands, none of whom put out the previous two goliaths of modern melodic metal.  And that's not exactly a bad thing either.  Evolution is inevitable and encouraged as far as I'm concerned as long as a band continually plays to their strengths, and there's no denying that this album focuses on great hooks just as much as the previous two, so I don't hate it on principle.  The problem is that this feels... lazy?  Safe?  I'm not sure, and even then I don't really think that at all.  This is a fucking confusing album for me.

Let's get the positives out of the way first, because there are a lot of them.  Nils still sounds like an impeccable Adonis belting out completely banging vocal hooks every single time he opens his gorgeous mouth.  Listen to something like "Ascension" or especially the title track.  It's like he's on top of Mount Olympus and we're all in the palm of his hand, and he's belting his heart out with a powerful tenor about how we're all amazing people who can accomplish great things.  I'm completely in love with this man, and he's still the highlight here.  There's also a heightened keyboard presence here, which is welcome enough considering some of the negatives I'll get to later.  They give the songs a lot of forward momentum and carry many of them on their own (outside of Nils, obviously), which is different, but neat.  Really the main positive is just how strong a good amount of the hooks are.  "In the Arms of the Devil" sounds like some lost Hellfire Club era Edguy track, and the title track is seriously phenomenal.  The chorus on that one is such an incessant ohrwurm that it's almost insulting.  It's dumb but holy hell does it stick, and I can't adequately express how much I adore the corny "whoa-oh" part that shows up for half a second in the background.  It's little details like that that turn this stupid thing into something special.  The band is barely power metal anymore, but on tracks like "Firesign" they prove that it doesn't really matter.  They don't need to be playing fast, they just need to be playing loud, and dammit they'll leave their mark.

The problem is that when they stripped away the hard hitting power metal from their sound, they sorta... forgot to replace it with something else.  There are a few noticeable filler tracks here ("Closing Doors", "My Darkest Hour", "Let Me Dream Forever"), which wasn't really a problem on their previous albums, but here even the good songs feel somewhat unfinished.  There is barely a riff to be found here, honestly.  Those lightspeed palm mutes that were an obvious signature on Renatus and Titanic Mass are almost nowhere nowhere to be found here (there are some slowed down versions of what I'm talking about on "Starfall"), instead the guitarist finds himself playing exclusively dumbass chugs and sustained power chords for the entire duration.  One cool Running Wild style triplet melody on "Ascension" can't cover up how empty "The Grey" is in the riffing department.  And I mean, maybe I shouldn't be too hard on them for this, because they obviously weren't going for riffs on this one.  There are some new hints of darkness on "Follow Me" which helps it stand out, but overall this is a very light, sugary album with absolutely no teeth whatsoever.  I can't really let "The Grey" go,-

Okay, I have to admit something here.  I don't plot out my reviews before I start writing, I just whip everything out as a first draft, and it was at exactly that point up there that I decided to go double check the Metal Archives page for the band to learn the guitarist's name (It's Mike, by the way), since I was gonna point out how fucking bored he must be during that song.  And what do I see on their artist page?  Nils Molin is active in one other band.  What band?

Amaranthe.

That is exactly who I was going to compare them to.  The line in my head was something like "Mike must be so bored with this song, 'The Grey' sounds like something post-Tarja Nightwish ghost wrote for Amaranthe".  And then I fucking learn that the vocalist is actually in Amaranthe now.  Suddenly every negative thing I was going to say about Firesign makes complete fucking sense.  The complete lack of riffs, the focus on vocals and keys at the expense of the now-unimportant rhythm section, the hooks being great but everything around them being so wholly unexciting, the few songs outside of the four or five that I really like sounding like they were written in a day, everything perfectly mirrors Amaranthe.  I was gonna call this "corsetcore with a dude" and it turns out that's exactly what it is.  There is absolutely no way that influence from them hasn't snuck in.  Whether it was a deliberate attempt to become a bit more palatable or just happenstance by the virtue of creative osmosis, it's there, and it's completely impossible to brush from my mind now that I know it for a fact.  The overt pop influence isn't necessarily a band thing in itself, and it's precisely why I like the title track so much, but it's so much more prominent now because the band decided to focus entirely on one strength when really they had a bunch of others as well, so a lot of cool elements were dropped.  Titanic Mass powers forward, Firesign bounces around.  And while the bounciness totally works for the title track or "Follow Me", it makes dull crap like "The Grey" just annoying.  God dammit god dammit all.

Well I guess that sorta shortens the rest of this review doesn't it?  There we have it, listen to corsetcore like that band Annette formed after leaving Nightwish or any random band Nuclear Blast pumps out with zero concern for quality simply because big tits in a corset are guaranteed Youtube views, that's exactly what half of this album sounds like.  There are great songs here, no doubt, I can't get enough of the title track, "Ascension", "In the Arms of the Devil", and "Follow Me", but the rest of it is either filler or just plain stupid.  That's why I'm so torn.  Do I want to recommend an album that I openly don't like half of because there are some great songs?  Do I want to tell you to pass because the good songs are great but the rest of the album is forgettable nonsense?  I still don't know!  This is a frustrating album for exactly that reason.  I feel kind of duped by the Amaranthe-isms being so prevalent immediately after the singer joined that band, but I kind of like the new direction when they hit the mark.  I don't know, I'd leave the rating blank or just rate the good and bad parts of the album differently if I could... so I will!


RATING: 84% when it's good, 39% when it's lame

Ghost - Prequelle

THROUGH! THE! PREQUELLE!

For years now, I've always seen Ghost to be "that stupid Scooby-Doo chase scene organ rock band with the dumb gimmick and wimpiest vocalist on the planet", and just sorta let their albums pass me by.  It really was mostly Papa Emeritus's voice that kept me away more than the light music, because believe me when I say that I can dig anything with a strong enough hook (trash talk Madonna in front of me, I dare you).  I never cared that the songs were light, poppy, and catchy necessarily.  The problem has always been those fucking weak ass vocals.  Seriously, there's zero oomph whatsoever!  He sounds like fucking Passenger, he's so spindly and brittle sounding, I could never, ever, ever get behind it.  Oddly enough, what broke me from this roadblock was actually just... ya know, talking to a Ghost fan.  I'm friends with a really normie dude (two of his all time favorite metal bands are Ghost and Babymetal) and I asked him how he can possibly stand Papa's vocals.  He described it as such:

"Well look at it from a different angle.  He's not supposed to be this big imposing creature, the whole point of Ghost is to be welcoming and inviting, it's really easy and catchy music that can suck anybody in.  He's more of a cult leader than a 'fire and brimstone' preacher, much more of a David Koresh than a Jim Jones.  He's soft spoken and harmless because that's how he gets you.  That's how all that Satanist stuff comes into play, nobody would join his 'church' if they knew how evil it was.  He's a friendly, charismatic leader who gets his 'ghouls' to do his dirty work once they've been converted."

I initially brushed it off as a scrambling rationalization, like the people who explain away how bad Final Fantasy VIII is by saying Squall died at the end of Disc 1... but I'll be damned if Ghost's first three albums didn't start making a whole lot more sense once I looked at it that way.

I explained all that to illustrate that I'm a new fan of the band, and a lot of my old prejudices have been thoroughly washed away as I sit here proudly jamming Meliora for a few weeks.  So when I tell you all that Prequelle is really fucking boring, I'm not coming from a place of long-entrenched hate anymore.

To get it out of the way, there are good tracks here.  "Rats" and "Dance Macabre" were the two advance singles and god dammit they are exactly what I want out of Ghost.  Those two songs showcase their strengths incredibly well, being larger-than-life fist pumping arena metal anthems, leaning closer to glam than any sort of neck wrecking heaviness.  These songs are basically two peas in a pod, and I can't help but see them as companion pieces to one another for how similarly they approach themselves.  They're both really upbeat poppy songs that have slightly sinister undertones lyrically but present themselves as completely harmless pop tunes musically, written specifically to be played with gusto at huge arenas and open air festivals with thousands of fans singing along.  You know, the same things that made tracks like "Year Zero" and "Square Hammer" so cool.  "Faith" is a bit more of a grower, being a much less immediate but also more riff-reliant track with more of a slow burning chorus.  Bonus points to the bridge for sounding fucking exactly like the bridge in Metallica's "Through the Never".  Rounding out the good tracks is "Witch Image", which sounds like a half-ballad reimagining of "Dance Macabre" a mere two tracks earlier, but the chorus is a stunner with some super simplistic guitar licks in the background that keep the soothing (but kinda dull) verses from dragging the song down.  Even more bonus points to the guitarists for the solos following the 80s glam template of being epic as shit and always a huge, melodic highlight of every track.

The problem arises with every other track being lame as shit.  When Prequelle is taken as a whole, it's really disjointed and poorly paced, with far too many weak tracks to justify the runtime.  Broken down, you've got ten tracks, two of which are upbeat pop rock, one strong arena metal track, two half/power ballads, two ballads, and three instrumentals, one of which is a mostly atmospheric intro.  That's not good.  Prequelle has absolutely no sense of momentum after "Faith" wraps up, as it spends the rest of the time sputtering up and down, stopping and starting, never really moving forwards with any real urgency or thought.  At that point it becomes merely a collection of songs, which isn't a bad thing in itself, but when most of the songs aren't interesting it becomes a huge problem.  In this regard, Ghost shows themselves to be more of a pop act than a rock one, because Prequelle is structured quite poppy in the sense that it's clearly centered around the two singles with a bunch of filler surrounding it, save one or two deep cuts that work out fairly well.  Shit like "Pro Memoria" has no place on any album being released to the general public, nobody wants to hear a weak acoustic ballad that doesn't actually progress. 

The instrumentals fare a bit better than the ballads, but really it's just "Miasma" that works.  That one is festooned with numerous flashy solos, spanning guitar, keys, and elephant, and it's just a fun driving track that keeps the pace up and doesn't get old.  "Helvetesfönster" on the other hand is a corny waltz that goes on for way too long and is sandwiched between a half ballad and a full on ballad to close the album.  Even though "Witch Image" is one of the good songs, it does contribute to the album skidding to a halt across three tracks, which really is my biggest problem overall.  The excitement isn't consistent, and the other moods they try to evoke just fall flat and aren't enjoyable in any real way.  It's not fun to sit through, and that's why it functions best as a pop album meant to have a few standout tracks to throw in a playlist and throw the rest out. 

There's no real place to put this, but I love how the cover is an obvious tribute to Sepultura's Bestial Devastation (look closely, even the background details are identical) despite Ghost being about the furthest fucking thing on the planet from Sepultura besides, I dunno, elevator muzak?

So it's unfortunate that I got around to understanding Ghost right when they released an extraordinarily mediocre album.  Prequelle has some excellent high points with "Rats" and "Dance Macabre" and I can't recommend them enough.  Huge choruses and big dumb hooks are abound on those tracks, and really that's what Ghost excels with.  These more somber and "serious" pieces are just weak and meandering, and the instrumental interludes are torturously long this time around.  I wouldn't call this a terrible album, but it's certainly not a good one either.  The few moments of heavy riffage found early on don't do nearly enough to ground the floaty pop melodies and those melodies themselves really only work when there's a driving force behind them.


RATING: 44%