Band:	Battle Beast
Album:	Circus Of Doom
Style:	Heavy metal, Power metal, Pop rock
Release date:	January 2022

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
11. The Lightbringer [bonus]
12. Tempest Of Blades [bonus]

The opening fusillade of Circus Of Doom seems designed to assuage the concerns of fans who wrote them off after No More Hollywood Endings – it’s a bold start, and one whose energy carries through the rest of the album. This is easily the heaviest that Battle Beast have sounded since their self-titled album.

Battle Beast’s trajectory has been difficult to gauge since that album dropped in 2013; when they first hit it big, they were at the crest of the post-Sabaton wave of cranked-up, no-frills power metal. They were a shrieking monster driven by simple structures, daring speed, and laryngitis-inducing choruses, and Battle Beast was the crystal pillar that established their credibility. And then… a lethargic patchwork in Unholy Savior, a tumultuous split with founding guitarist Anton Kabanen, a tentative return in Bringer Of Pain, and finally a controversial deviation in No More Hollywood Endings that seemed to mark a quiet end to the band’s momentum. There are some fans out there who prefer not to acknowledge that last album, and for whom Battle Beast is a band to talk about in the past tense. I happened to enjoy No More Hollywood Endings and I was quite content to entertain more of the same, provided the band could hammer out some more consistent songwriting. Still, it was not what I had hoped to hear in the wake of Bringer Of Pain, my favorite album of theirs, and a formerly rip-roaring heavy metal thunder boiling off into a summery, AOR-tinged pop rock jam like that was difficult to interpret. Swings and roundabouts, I guess.

Well, calling it a circus of “doom” might be uncharacteristically ghastly (we still like fun here), but this album is definitely a circus, and with palpable enthusiasm it pulls Battle Beast back to the ethos of sturdy, barebones power metal: the rhythm section is amped up again, the choruses rock with bellowed passion, and Noora Louhimo excels at the helm, letting loose her most impressive vocal work to date. Right from the title track’s first salvo, it’s obvious that the band is making up for lost time, and anyone who spent the last few years despairing over the band’s future should be reinvigorated down to their bones by the voracious grandeur of “Wings Of Light” and “Place That We Call Home.” This is not a straight reiteration of the band’s early days, however; they have learned lessons from these last few albums, and it’s all to their benefit, for as crunchy and raucous as their golden-era anthems could be, there was always a lot of empty space to gloss over. This is what the real future of Battle Beast – and power metal – ought to sound like.

There is evident cross-pollination with Brymir, the other project of guitarist Joona Björkröth (and until 2019 his brother, keyboardist Janne Björkröth); the tones of the guitars and keys are, unsurprisingly, much the same, and the backing vocals have a spacious, masculine choral effect. The use of piano or smooth, orchestra-toned synths instead of the sharp bumblebee stings of earlier material, which it seems Kabanen took with him to Beast In Black, allows Battle Beast to create in tracks like “Wings Of Light” and “Eye Of The Storm” a galactically deep sound – push some pumping percussion and soaring choruses into the mix and you’ve got a unique type of anthem, the type that Battle Beast debuted with “Beyond The Burning Skies” on Bringer Of Pain. Battle Beast is still at its core a traditional heavy metal band that’s just catchy and cheesy enough to make it into the power metal bracket, and to some extent these elements existed in the earlier albums, but more and more we’re seeing touches of classical grandeur akin to Brymir’s epic symphony, and it’s in the exploration and convergence of these elements that I see Battle Beast gearing up to achieve true longevity.

Circus Of Doom also borrows significantly from the band’s last two albums in terms of songwriting and production. Bringer Of Pain resurfaces in the stomping anti-elite takedown “Master Of Illusion,” a clear sequel to “King For A Day,” while “Familiar Hell” makes a comeback of sorts in “Russian Roulette.” Above I addressed “Beyond The Burning Skies,” which had already spilled over into another killer single in 2019’s “Eden” and breathes new life yet again here. The similarities are apparent, but hardly a deal-breaker, as this album comes with its own strong batch of choruses, and it’s so much more electrifying to listen to anyway – the best thing that Battle Beast took from those last two albums is the interest in more complex writing. Deeper layers of instrumentation, greater appreciation for nuance and affectation, more “stuff” happening in between refrains. The frequent mid-song dead periods always turned me away from their older material more than anything else, but they have managed to fill out their sound beautifully and consistently, so, even if it’s not quite as tight or memorable as Bringer Of Pain altogether, Circus Of Doom is already one of the band’s most listenable albums.

There’s no sense in denying that Battle Beast is a pretty unidirectional band, variations in quality notwithstanding, so this is where we slide in the disclaimer that if you didn’t like them before, you aren’t likely to now. There’s still a lot of dancey, glamorous pop rock influence, so some tunes may be less appetizing to fans still suspicious of anything that strays too far from pure power metal. But if you can dig a solid sound and appreciate the improvements that the band is making to its fundamental approach, Circus Of Doom is a statement that you shouldn’t abandon hope in Battle Beast.