Battle Beast - Steel

Published January 16 2012

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Genre	Heavy Metal	Nitte Valo	Vocals
Tracks	11	Anton Kabanen	Guitar
Running time	46 Min.	Juuso Soinio	Guitar
Label	Nuclear Blast	Eero Sipilä	Bass
Release	27 January 2012	Pyry Vikki	Drums
Country	Finland	Janne Björkroth	Keyboard
Producer	Nino Laurenne
Similar artists	Bullet, Steelwing

This debut album was self-released last April in their native Finland and now it's time for a worldwide release for the Wacken Open Air metal battle winners of 2010. As so many upcoming and/or younger bands do, they play eighties retro heavy metal. Almost all music have been done before by other bands, so nowadays it is hard to be groundbreaking and at the same time create great and interesting music worth listening to.

I had never heard of this band before, so they were totally unknown to me until recently. When listening to the album, I soon found out that they have a female vocalist, but I wasn't 100 percent sure, so I had to check the facts, because she sounds like random Finnish hoarse, kicked in the nuts metal singer.

What about the songs? Ten heavy metal tracks and of course one ballad. Many songs are a little powerless, but on the other hand some of the songs are good as they have a nice flow from time to time. What about the sound? Nothing new, but who would believe otherwise when it's retro? Up-tempo, mid-tempo and sometimes heavier. With a kind of light production, I think this album should have been heavier produced to get that slap in the face sound, although I'm well aware of the fact that there never was an intention to do so.

To compare and think this heavy metal is up there with the debut albums from giants like Iron Maiden and W.A.S.P. would be insane, but if you compare them to other eighties retro metal bands they do okay. This album is worth 4 chalices. It's not bad , but on the other hand this record won't spin daily at my home either. However, the kids may like it… if they don't find the real deal first.