Artist: Battle Beast
Title: Steel
Type: Album
Label: Nuclear Blast Records

These Finnish traditional metal masters won the Wacken 2010 Metal Battle contest, whether that is something you are cynical about is another thing altogether, but from the opening notes all I can say is hell yeah! Really, truthfully sounding a lot like Accept, and that’s both musically and vocally, this is a rather pleasing listen.

Songs like ‘Justice and Metal’ are true metal gems, vocally its rather amazing (strong female metal vocals, none of your gothic and operatic rubbish here), in fact the music sounds a lot like Accept and similar metal legends such as Bullet (the German and the Swedish band!). On the flipside of the rousing metal anthems is ‘Savage and Saint’, this is one of those epic ballads that would feature on many a Manowar album, and rather comfortably I might add. This song in question gives a majestic feeling to one’s soul, and with Valo’s siren song like voice, this is a cool break up from the clenched fist pumping metal that you will gladly embrace beforehand. There are other steel glove sheathed masterpieces along the way, ‘Die-Hard Warrior’ is a mix of WASP, TNT and other high hitters, whilst other large expressions of epic music include ‘Iron Hand’, this one covers the music of both Grave Digger and Sabaton, and comes across fresh and invigorating, if admittedly it’s a little OTT! The dangerous ground encountered here makes me wonder if this band will be lumped into the usual power metal crowd, there are some rather OTT moments, but I would give the band much more credit for the heads down, balls to the wall (I had to use that phrase!) traditional metal that’s used and that is where most of the magic happens for Battle Beast and for me.

I love this album, ‘Steel’ may not be an original album title for this style of music and yes, all the clichés are here, but this is a solid traditional metal anthem for the start of the new year, no doubt the media machine will push this band further this year, and deservingly so, Battle Beast have songs in their arsenal worth taking hold of and with the talent on offer, it’s surely only a matter of time before they appear on some big tours and festivals.

http://www.hypeproductions.fi/battlebeast

Paul Maddison

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