In 2015 guitarist Anton Kabanen, the founder of Battle Beast, left the band. Nevertheless, it wasn’t some kind of sabbatical and that year he founded his new band Beast In Black. In 2017 the debut album Berserker made big noise within Heavy/Power Metal fans. Vastly it was because of well-done mix of heaviness, inherent to the genre and simple but very catchy motives, which stuck in your mind.
The band went to a couple European tours with such bands like W.A.S.P., Rhapsody and Nightwish and in the beginning of 2019 their second LP From Hell With Love. “Will the band make not less successful release without getting into vicious circle of self- iteration?” – this was the biggest affair of coming album (Spoiler alert: yes, they did).
Before the album’s release Beast In Black introduced two singles. “Die By The Blade” continues the musical conception of the first album and could be easily included into Berserker. Second single “Sweet True Lies” sounds more like it comes straight from 80s. Although it can be said “I heard something like this once” about these two songs, they keep the main feature of Beast In Black: “Fight until you die by the blade of the one you hate” and “Baby, baby tell me more of your lies” stuck in your head.
The first album’s track “Cry Out For A Hero” and main “From Hell With Love” deprave any doubts: if you somehow liked the debut Beast In Black‘s album, you came to a right party. From Hell With Love is like another part of a good movie: you know what to expect, but it doesn’t prevent you to enjoy it.
On a new album Beast In Black widely use the same things that were on a previous one: seriously, why deny the thing that works well. Also From Hell With Love continues the line started in Berserker. Even if in some moments you can find some similar patterns and motives, the band isn’t trespass on it. The songs “From Hell With Love”, “Sweet True Lies”, “Die By The Blade”, “Unlimited Sin”, “No Surrender” are catchy as hell, and it’s almost half of an album.
“Relentless” has some kind of Nightwish sound (seems that the tour with Nightwish had its influence). A little bit overextended ballad “Oceandeep” has an epic end. These two songs are standing apart from the other material, meanwhile “This Is War” associates with Mark Tornillo’s Accept era.
During the whole album Yannis Papadopoulos shows the power ant the range of his voice again – seems like even more than in Berserker. Anton and Kasperi’s guitar playing also touch the heart strings of those, who is passionate about beautiful long solos.
All in all, From Hell With Love makes exactly what fans could expect from Beast In Black: it remains true to all the things that fans loved in Berserker and gently, without some cardinal changes, develops it in chosen musical vector. I really hope that the band will keep the same spirit in the next albums.
All right, you can call Beast In Black‘s music “poppy” or “old”, but their music put a smile on your face and maybe it will make you fucking happy for some time. Isn’t this enough to call an album “great”?
From Hell With Love was released on February, 8 via Nuclear Blast Records.
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