Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Omen
Label: Metal Blade Records
Released: 1984
Runtime: 44:13
Rating: 4.5/5
Yes. Metal Blade Records is slowly but surely making good on its announced »threat« of a series of vinyl and “digi pack” CD reissues from old-school and pioneering metal acts who were under its wing in the eighties and whose work permanently shaped the face of world metal. Last year the first three Slayer albums got reissued, along with their first live record, and this year the first three Omen albums get the same treatment. The reissue of the third one, »The Curse« (1986), will include the EP »Nightmare« from 1987, while the reissues of the second album »Warning of Danger« (1985) and the debut »Battle Cry« (1984), the one we’re talking about today, come packed with bonus tracks.
Omen showed up on the horizon not long after the NWOBHM exploded in Great Britain. The deep inspiration drawn from the bands that the new wave of British heavy metal churned out by the ocean-load is obvious on the band’s studio debut from the very first bars of the insanely catchy opener Death Rider. »Battle Cry« is an incredible mix of ten excellent, old-school-flavored metal crushers that hit with raw, instantly gripping force (such killer riffs are woven into them), while Omen also dress up the whole thing with an unashamed dose of epic grandeur, bombast and doom-laden, occult drama theater that flirts with moments of mysticism as well.
Even though the bang first went off in Great Britain, the early heavy metal bands of the North American continent decided to carry that British boom over into their own musical language by playing the material as fast as possible. Nothing wrong with that, even if the highly musical format that British and European bands always followed so faithfully sometimes gets swapped for semitone moves in the lead phrases. Those are also the elementary starting points of early speed and thrash metal.
The style Omen presented on their debut is something special. There weren’t many bands playing metal at that time yet. They were developing in convergence, in the same time and space, so each of them carried a self-grown identity, and all you could pick up were influences from and inspiration by older bands. Among the American groups of the time, Omen could really draw on Manilla Road: the dark epic bombast and mystical atmosphere, even though Manilla Road achieved it in a quite different way in terms of composition and production, ended up with a kindred atmosphere when you compare the output of both bands between 1983 and 1987. Still, Omen developed independently but in convergence with the other bands, their generational contemporaries on the North American continent. Stylistically, their “line of epic metal” is comparable with Cirith Ungol, Tyrant, Lady Killer, Canada’s Sword, and it’s worth adding the first two studio albums by Savatage, etc… At the same time, the sound of the Omen debut is still stylistically closer to the line of early heavy metal on the North American continent that took its inspiration from Judas Priest (the first three Pantera albums, the first TT Quick mini album, then bands like Liege Lord, Fortress, Malice,..) than to the line that started to “complicate” things more substantially (while being inspired by Iron Maiden), meaning the line of bands represented by, say, early Fates Warning and Queensryche.
One more band deserves a mention here, conditionally reconcilable with the Omen debut, a band drawn to war themes and the untamed savagery of the Conan-esque heresy. Manowar. By 1984, when Omen had barely fought their way to a studio debut, Manowar already had three albums in their pocket, and the fourth came out before the year was over.
Omen came across as their own thing right from the debut. With exceptional aesthetics, they brought the wildness of epic vistas into their metal vocabulary, where the wide clang of swordplay rings out and spilled blood tears through endlessly swollen, foaming torrents. Primal (primitive), raw, musical, aggressive, dirty,… An excellent set of lead guitar phrases that delivered ten tracks of perfect impact and effectively gave birth to one of the finest classics of the early period in the development of American metal. The cherry on top is the distinctive, at times signature-raspy to hoarse vocal of J.D. Kimball, sadly deceased since 2003, which only deepens the doom-laden mood of the drama theater created on the album, stuffed to the brim with occult moments.
Although »Battle Cry« already got a limited-run reissue back in 2005, this new edition, apart from a sonic sharpening of the elements (the remaster), brings nothing new. The same two bonus tracks are added again. One is the excellent marching anthem Torture Me, which back in 1984 appeared only on the fifth installment of the cult compilation »Metal Massacre« (in the company of Voivod, Fates Warning, Overkill and Metal Church, among others). This time around the track sits in the middle of the album’s tracklist, and a live version of the classic Battle Cry, recorded in 1986 at a show in San Antonio, is tacked on at the end.
»Battle Cry« is an album that holds a special place in the metal universe. With it and the next two albums, Omen wrote themselves into metal history and in the years that followed influenced a younger generation of musicians with their legacy. For instance, on the album »Wargods of Metal« (1998), Germany’s Sacred Steel covered the title track of the Omen debut, and not long ago much younger American “epic savage metal revivalists” Visigoth did the same with that very song.
So what’s left for a closing thought? Do you want to feel the courage of an immortal glow and the undying passion of originality, as captured on the debut of Omen, released more than thirty years ago, a band that with its vision unknowingly paved the way for the subgenre diversification of heavy metal? Don’t think twice, this album belongs in your personal collection of favorite metal records.
Omen – “Battle Cry”, 1984 (full album):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6uYgGbUnDE
Lineup
J.D. Kimball – vocals
Kenny Powell – guitar
Jody Henry – bass
Steve Wittig – drums
Production
Bill Metoyer
Tracklist
1. Death Rider
2. The Axeman
3. Last Rites
4. Dragon’s Breath
5. Be My Wench
6. Torture Me*
7. Battle Cry
8. Die by the Blade
9. Prince of Darkness
10. Bring out the Beast
11. In the Arena
12. Battle Cry (live version)*
*…bonus tracks
