Band:	Beast In Black
Album:	Berserker
Style:	Heavy metal, Power metal
Release date:	November 2017

01. Beast In Black
02. Blind And Frozen
03. Blood Of A Lion
04. Born Again
05. Zodd The Immortal
06. The Fifth Angel
07. Crazy, Mad, Insane
08. Hell For All Eternity [bonus]
09. Eternal Fire
10. Go To Hell [bonus]
11. End Of The World
12. Ghost In The Rain

Anton Kabanen has pulled a Megadeth: immediately after his unceremonious ousting from Battle Beast, he went off to form his own band (with blackjack and hookers, presumably): Beast In Black, a band that seems specifically engineered to outperform Battle Beast and tell the world how pissed off Kabanen is. Sure enough, after two years of brewing and stewing, the project's full-length debut is at hand; this strategy worked for Dave Mustaine, but has it paid off for Anton Kabanen?

I'll hold off on making any qualitative judgments on the matter of which one is the better Beast, since you people can debate that amongst yourselves and I'll probably change my mind a week after I make a decision anyway. They're quite close. What's important to us right here and now is that Beast In Black has proven to be a massively successful experiment - at least if, like me, you were waiting for a synth-laden, cliché-celebrating, I-can't-believe-it's-not-Eurovision pop metal album that would make Sabaton say, "Too commercial for us, thanks." While the eponymous opener, "Beast In Black," is a vicious and gutsy assault that could rival any power metal band for thunderous audacity, the rest of Berserker follows a more beat-happy, bombastic pop formula that Battle Beast often aimed for but didn't quite achieve until Bringer Of Pain.

Said opener is in fact so extreme in comparison that I'm almost disappointed by the direction that the second track pioneers, but even if the band's theme is the most metal tune by an enormous margin, I still fell in love with the stuff that comes after it. Beast In Black is so ultra power-style finger-lickin' cheesy that it makes Manowar look like Leonard Cohen. I don't fully understand that comparison, but I hope it helps illustrate how aggressively over-the-top this album is. I'm a sucker for this kind of catchy nonsense, so the knowledge that this band is only a few decibels away from the pop charts is more enticement than discouragement.

Where Beast In Black succeeds the most is in its sheer presence. The hot-rodded melodrama, the unabashed synthesizer saturation, and the layers on layers of vocals and orchestrations make Berserker feel as enormous and substantial as it was destined to be. The middle of the album - tracks like "Zodd The Immortal" and "The Fifth Angel" - feels underdeveloped because it eschews the heavy-handedness of the tracks that bookend Berserker. That middle portion, although still enjoyable, doesn't appear to be anything more serious than old Battle Beast filler, and exemplifies my main issue with some Battle Beast material: there's not really much to them. There's just a riff and a chorus and some wicked sick vocals, but nothing for the song to do when it's not at the good part and nowhere for the song to go once it's there. Beast In Black has fixed that problem with the drastic upswing in production and instrumentation; there's a lot more going on most of the time, or at least it sounds like there is, resulting in a more consistent and engaging landscape. Maybe the album still drags sometimes, but songs like "Blind And Frozen," "Born Again," and "End Of The World" are now essential parts of my life's musical canon.

The sky-piercing shriek towards the end of "Ghost In The Rain" drives home the point this album started making from the very first song: Yannis Papadopoulos is our next star frontman, the next favorite son of power metal whose vocals will be recalled in whispers around campfires and in legends decades from now. His voice ripples with the silky softness of a kitten when treating the delicate "Ghost In The Rain," and if you didn't know you were listening to a metallic Adonis, the first verse of "Blind And Frozen" could easily pass for Tarja herself - my dad remarked upon hearing that song, "Oh, they have a woman singer, too?" - but when he wants to, Yannis can match Anton Kabanen's blood-curdling, throat-murdering shrieks for vigor and nastiness. Yannis's versatility, energy, and ability to go even further over the top than is necessary make an irreplaceable contribution to the success of Beast In Black.

Turns out I haven't been paying attention, because "Beast In Black" is not the first song for which Anton Kabanen drew inspiration from the manga Berserk - more like the 400th. I guess I should have been tipped off by past titles like "The Band Of The Hawk," "The Black Swordsman," and "Griffith Did Nothing Wrong." The guy thanked Kentaro Miura in the liner notes. I'm an idiot. It doesn't really matter, though, because the song isn't really about Berserk; it's about how much Kabanen hates Battle Beast now, just like "Crazy, Mad, Insane" and bonus tracks "Go To Hell" and "Hell For All Eternity," and probably all the other ones if you pay close enough attention. I wasn't being entirely facetious with that first paragraph - it's clear to anyone paying attention that Beast In Black exists for the specific purpose of working through Anton's rage at his former bandmates. Do with that what you will, but "Beast In Black" went to the top of my 2017 playlist after about four seconds.

There's a lot of behind-the-scenes drama that went into the creation of this album and it does show, but as I hope I made clear, I'm rooting for both Beast In Black and Battle Beast from here on out. Both bands seem to have found their direction, so perhaps a split was the best option. Regardless, Berserker will be a tough act to follow, but I'm counting on Beast In Black to come back with another rager.