Beast in Black - a mixture of Sabaton and Judas Priest?

Pure coincidence that I found this band. A song of theirs was featured on a sampler CD of a magazine, and it was in between some songs of band I'm into (I think Almanac and Evertale). It caught my attention.

The mixture mentioned in the topic title explained: this is like Sabaton but with riffs and a good singer. Kind of falls in the realm of 80s synthpop metal, but the main guy behind this band, Anton Kabanen, left his former band Battle Beast because he did not want to follow the more poppy approach they have pursued since they've kicked him out. So this stuff has quite a bite

Some samples for you guys:

Whoooooaaaa......that dude sounds exactly like girl! very weird!

^That threw off a lot of people, yeah. But it's only in the verses of Blind and Frozen.

MMmmm....wow....not a fan of the lyrics at all. Maybe this is why he got booted from Battle beast? lol. To bad cause the music shredds.

Yeah, he draws inspiration from a Japanese manga comic series. Which in itself should be a crime, I think. But yeah, the music is really good.

I'd rather listen to Sabaton. 

I really dig the music, but just can't get into the vocals.

I really liked the first three Battle Beast albums, but their last one only had a few decent songs IMO

Black Rider wrote:I'd rather listen to Sabaton. 

To quote Alestorm: you objectively have bad taste in music.

Nah, I'm a Sabaton fan since 2009 and only started getting into Battle Beast recently. And despite the fact that Sabaton makes extremely generic music, I enjoy most of the albums they release (although Carolus Rex was a low point).

Staybrite wrote:I really dig the music, but just can't get into the vocals.

I really liked the first three Battle Beast albums, but their last one only had a few decent songs IMO

I get what you mean about the vocals, yet I love them
Concerning Battle Beast, as I understand it Kabanen was thrown out just after their third album because the rest of the band wanted to have more influence on the writing process and by that, to pursue a more poppy direction. So Kabanen was kicked out/left. From what I've heard, he made the right choice (although I like the songs I heard from the latest Battle Beast).

Andreas89 wrote:

Staybrite wrote:I really dig the music, but just can't get into the vocals.

I really liked the first three Battle Beast albums, but their last one only had a few decent songs IMO

I get what you mean about the vocals, yet I love them
Concerning Battle Beast, as I understand it Kabanen was thrown out just after their third album because the rest of the band wanted to have more influence on the writing process and by that, to pursue a more poppy direction. So Kabanen was kicked out/left. From what I've heard, he made the right choice (although I like the songs I heard from the latest Battle Beast).

That makes sense, because the musical direction was bit odd on that fourth BB album and the song-writing was not up to the previous standards.

I picked up this album and I wanted to like it, I really did. I just couldn't get into it. And for this tune, I can only say, "Europe wants their one hit back."

metaldude wrote:I picked up this album and I wanted to like it, I really did. I just couldn't get into it. And for this tune, I can only say. "Europe wants their one hit back."

That could be the cheesiest/greatest thing I have ever heard!
I had a grin on my face the whole time

Does the rest of their stuff sound like this?
If so, are their lyrics pretty clean?

(Don't have ton of time to check now, hoping for a quick answer for later )

I don't listen to it a lot, so I can't really say. Andre could tell you.

I have listened to this album a lot since I got it, so I can tell.

First, yes, the song Eternal Fire is quite examplary for the rest of the album; Born Again sounds most like it though.

As for the lyrics, they are a sort of mix of the Berserker manga (as I said, manga is a grave crime) and Kabanen's anger about being kicked out of Battle Beast. I heard the f-word two times, but since there is no Dutch equivalent of that word (at least not in that context), I don't really mind. I do understand why it would matter to you. Besides, in one of the two cases I can relate to the sentence in which it is used, as in that it describes an attitude about how "good" doing evil can feel; this especially about current events in society (and alas, even in my family in law).

As for the opening track, there's alot that I can say about this merciless retaliatory attitude toward injustice and evil. It's a theme that can also be found in the first five albums of Rhapsody, for instance.

Oh, and you can see the lyrics for yourself here: http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/beastinblack/berserker.html

Well yea from a few of those songs, I probably would not buy the full album

I love his voice, will probably just buy a few songs

Thanks Andreas!

You're welcome!

And if you're into his voice, you might like Wardrum, and especially their album Awakening. They don't have Beast in Black's angsty lyrics

This was new to me and I kinda liked it. Might check out Wardrum.

I will definitely check out Wardrum then!

Their entire Awakening album can be found on youtube, so here it is: