Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Release date: January 21, 2022
Production: Janne Björkroth
Length: 41.34 min
Genre: Power Metal
Rating: 9.5/10
Battle Beast are Finnish power metallers who run a kind of ‘underground’ symphonic thing on one side. On the other, they blend the very best of 80s pop songwriting aesthetics into the mix with unbelievably smooth skill. Now they’re presenting their sixth studio album, »Circus of Doom«.
I honestly had no real plan to review the band’s new album. There are tons of new records out there, and you always run into the problem of which one to give priority. Then you throw »Circle Of Doom« on through the headphones. The fire and heart that the production, the execution and the songwriting radiate kick you straight into a writing gallop …
After Anton Kabanen left, and he finally went off to live his dream in Beast In Black, the band’s compass needle started acting up a bit. The albums »Bringer Of Pain« (2017) and its successor, the second-to-last album »No More Hollywood Endings« (2019), didn’t fully live up to expectations either. It looked like Battle Beast had said their piece. And then »Circus Of Doom« arrives and, with sheer vehemence, totally shamelessly and without an ounce of respect, throws such insinuations out the window. It’s the most mature album the band has put out to date. They actually ‘borrowed a bit of Kabanen’s musical philosophy’ of songwriting and laid down on tape a perfect mix of the symphonic touch, pomp and bombast of 80s pop. They worked it, with great skill and smoothness, into their home-turf power metal rhetoric. In that sense »Circus of Doom« is incredibly well balanced: charging, ‘borderline stressfully’ ravenous power metal anthems loaded with ultra-musical pomp and hypnotically catchy hunger, with atmospheric peaks in the chorus melodies that effortlessly steal the spotlight from each other. They knock you down one after another across the whole album. There are no highlights, or to put it differently, every track is a highlight. More precisely, you pick the album’s favorites yourself.
Opening with the title track is a direct hit, since it stands out a little among all the tracks on the album. They subtly worked in elements of chanson, and in a different production setting the title track could easily have been the soundtrack to an 80s James Bond movie. In short: the album grabs you right away. It starts with the opener and holds the listener tight through the good 41 minutes of music it has. ‘Less is more’ is a songwriting axiom, and Battle Beast capitalized on it absolutely brilliantly this time.
Everything is where it’s supposed to be. Hooks. A string of inventive hooks. Melodies developing with a fascinating build-up of moods, from the verse through the pre-chorus into an explosively bombastic chorus. Wings Of Light is a proper little school of songwriting perfection in that respect. But then Master Of Illusion follows it, and after that comes Where Angels Fear To Fly, and you get damn confused trying to analyze rationally, pigeonhole and hunt for potential parallels. That’s just proof of how sharp and polished the songwriting is on the album as a whole. The voltage and the hunger, through an extremely dynamic course of events, don’t let up for a second. Choir melodies, symphonic ornaments and keyboards are added in the right doses and in just the right production balance with the power metal phrasing. There are some very skillfully placed modulations in the ‘mid-eight’ passages that bring extra atmospheric twists and keep the dynamic flow of events at a high level. This time the band polished and fine-tuned the album with incredible persistence and ambition, and it’s the most mature product of the band to date.
On vocals, the band is led by the exceptional singer Noora Louhimo, who has been a chapter of her own ever since she joined (on the band’s second, self-titled album). She belongs in the very top tier of vocalists in heavy metal (we’re talking normal singing here), and it’s really her charisma and vocal power that hold up Battle Beast’s past releases, with a constant pull for anyone who’s only just getting to know the band. Circus of Doom is an album designed, in songwriting terms, at every point to give Noora maximum expression, or, to ‘tone it down’, optimum expression. The chorus melodies grab you under her touch as she shapes the verses musically, and it’s downright stunning.
The Finns are known for taking the best of 80s pop’s musical rhetoric and cleverly building it into metal. There’s a pile of bands who are flawless at it. Tuple, Leverage, Brother Fairtribe, Stratovarius (just check out the song Hunting High And Low), and it even goes so far that even more extreme bands like Amorphis and Insomnium can hardly avoid these traits. That’s a legacy, that’s character, you could even call it the musical character of the Finnish nation itself. Battle Beast join the ranks of those mentioned with feather-light ease, and with their latest album »Circus of Doom« they’ve delivered one of the most polished and compositionally most mature albums of their more than fifteen-year career. »Circus Of Doom« is an album power metal fans will rank very high. In the upper tier of the best albums of the genre released this year. You can say that already now, with 2022 barely underway.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
01. Circus Of Doom
02. Wings Of Light
03. Master Of Illusion
04. Where Angels Fear To Fly
05. Eye Of The Storm
06. Russian Roulette
07. Freedom
08. The Road To Avalon
09. Armageddon
10. Place That We Call Home
Lineup:
Noora Louhimo – vocals
Janne Björkroth – guitar, keyboards
Juuso Soinio – guitar
Eero Sipilä – bass
Pyry Vikki – drums
