Battle Beast – Battle Beast

Finnish heavy metal band Battle Beast are back with their second album. Since releasing their first album early last year they’ve toured Europe supporting Nightwish (but sadly not the UK), before their singer Nitte Valo quit in September. Happily the band quickly found a replacement, Noora Louhimo, and have since spent time in the studio recording the new album.
Obviously a change of singer is something that fans are going to be concerned about as after all, the singers voice is usually the most immediately identifiable characteristic of a bands sound – just look at Iron Maiden as an example where anyone other than Bruce Dickinson just doesnt sound right. Nitte Valo had quite a distinctive vocal style – real heavy metal screams and powerful vocals, so the big question was would the band change direction vocally or would they find someone with a similar voice. Well I’m happy to report that Noora has a great voice in the same style as Nitte – powerful and perfectly suited to Battle Beast’s heavy sound. This is proper old-school heavy metal, no symphonic or gothic metal here, just heavy guitar driven metal.

Fans of the first album (Steel) are going to love this – there’s no change of direction, just more of the same only bigger and better.

It’s a very strong album – I love the whole thing, with no weak tracks, but for me the best track here is ‘Out of control’ which deserves to be the first single – it’s just such a strong track.

While Battle Beast may not have made it to the UK with Nitte on vocals, happily they have a UK date already arranged for later this year – they will be playing Camden Underworld on 27th September with Powerwolf. That’s definitely going to be a gig worth getting to.

An excellent album.

Rating: 9/10

Track listing:

1. Let it roar
2. Out of control
3. Out on the streets
4. Neuromancer
5. Raven
6. Into the heart of danger
7. Machine revolution
8. Golden age
9. Kingdom
10. Over the top
11. Fight kill die
12. Black ninja
13. Rain man