Battle Beast: The Circus Has Come To Town
For over 250 years, audiences have been entertained by travelling circuses; they’ve changed a lot in that time, but the spectacle is hard to beat. As it turns out, ‘spectacle’ is also something that can be used to describe the live show of BATTLE BEAST, one of Finland’s premier power metal bands and now, with the advent of sixth record Circus Of Doom, bearing the torch for, erm, circus metal. Really, though?
“We just liked it as a title!” admits bassist Eero Sipilä, thus quashing any notion of a new sub-genre revolving around strongmen, acrobats and putting heads into the mouths of lions. “It fits in your mouth well, sounds just like a classic heavy metal album name and it also sounds a bit funny; of course it’s a serious title, but it’s not super serious, which in my opinion depicts pretty well what we do as a band.”
Up until now, that outlook has served BATTLE BEAST well. Formed in 2005 by now BEAST IN BLACK guitarist Anton Kabanen, they’ve become a beloved act both across the world and in their home country, where every album since 2015’s Unholy Savior has hit the top of the charts. Eero, naturally, prefers to leave all commercial success dealings to their label and concentrate on making the best music possible which, when everything is considered, has certainly been achieved with Circus Of Doom.
“One positive aspect of COVID-19 was that we could really focus on the record and make it as good as possible,” reveals Eero. “Like the last three albums, we all wrote songs individually and brought them into the studio to put them together and work on them properly, but normally we’d record in the summer around festival appearances and, without those, we could work continuously.”
Of course, doing festival appearances is something most bands would love to do right now; in fact, at the time of speaking, BATTLE BEAST were about to round off a series of home country shows for Christmas, something Eero hasn’t taken for granted. “It’s been so great and cool to be back on stage – it’s such a luxury nowadays and, even though there’s an extensive European and American tour planned for 2022, we just have to take it one day at a time and be happy about every opportunity we play.”
When they do play again, they’ll have a lot more songs than the two singles they were playing at the end of last year – the stupidly catchy Master Of Illusions and the fist-pumping Eye Of The Storm – to delve into from the record. Eero’s comments that the band write their own songs at home and then bring them into the studio to work on together begs the question of what he is personally responsible for this time around, and he mentions that he contributed two of the tracks in Wings Of Light and Place We Call Home, along with a couple of other ideas that will either be bonus tracks or are still in development for something further down the line.
Of course, the follow up question is what was the starting point for his own songs and Wings Of Light, as it turns out, has a much more serious backstory than the manner he explains it. “It’s actually a pretty funny story – I had a bump with my health and was hospitalised in the summer of 2020 for a brain tumour, which was really fucking scary at that point but, when I got out, my mind was racing with inspiration and so, whilst I can’t tell you exactly what the song is about, I know it came from that time in my life.”
To quote Ron Burgundy, that escalated quickly, but Eero laughs it off as Finnish humour and goes on to explain that Place We Call Home is a more universal song about finding your own spot in the world. “It’s very universal, the feelings and emotions of wanting to belong in life, and although there’s a lot of magic and mystery on top of those lyrics, that’s where the root of it all is. However, I don’t want to get too deep into it; I’d rather let people interpret the song in their own way.”
However people wish to perceive the song meanings on Circus Of Doom, there’s one analogy that will ring true from all who listen – it’s a bouncy, fun album stuffed with a smorgasbord of riffs, synths and arena-sized choruses that will set up a permanent residency inside your head for the foreseeable future. You can count on one hand the amount of bands who are in BATTLE BEAST’s league when it comes to creating exciting, delectable power metal and that bar is being continually raised. Roll up, roll up, get your tickets for the show!
Circus Of Doom is out now via Nuclear Blast Records.
Like BATTLE BEAST on Facebook.