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Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Battle Beast - Unholy Savior



In January of 2015 I did a review for Battle Beast’s song “Madness.” I chose to talk about “Madness” because it was the fresh new single that had just been released by Battle Beast at the time, and it was also my first exposure to the band. I had a lot of raw feelings of excitement to express, which typically leads itself to some meaningful commentary.

At the time I wrote my mediocre impression, but highly enjoyable experience, listening to the band; I wrote: “The guitar solo is not going to win any awards but is serviceable. The rhythm sections is solid and heavy but nothing world breaking.” I had not listened to their second album (self titled) yet, I had not listened to the newly released “Unholy Savior” yet, so I did not know.

I did not know, how freaking badass everything about Battle Beast was. “Madness” is a very fun song, but it possesses a touch silliness with the questionable English, and the obvious attempt at being demon warrior hardcore metal. It is a good song, a very good metal song, but, it is not Battle Beast’s best, in fact it pales in comparison to the title track from “Unholy Savior.”

I did not know.

The self titled album blew me away after I finally got my hands on it and listened to it in full. “Let if Roar,” “Out of Control,” “Into the Heart of Danger,” and “Machine Revolution” are all amazing metal songs, each one of them make me want to go on an epic journey to fight demons and robots, and despite however much I love the “Battle Beast” album, I am only so confident in saying that it is slightly superior to their third album “Unholy Savior.” The only reason I am so torn, is the strength of the title track “Unholy Savior.”

Had I known just how perfect “Unholy Savior” is as a song, I would have skipped over “Madness” and gotten right to the point; “Unholy Savior” very good album, but the title track is a mind blowing awesome song.

I have often written about the ebbs and flows of music intensity. Low valleys make for more dramatic heights. Soft moments in the metal song make the furious moments all the more meaningful. Balance is the key, and “Unholy Savior” is a perfect example of rising action, climax, rest and second climax. Exactly the story structure I most enjoy.

The intro; the hum of the keyboards, the sound of a toiling bell, a quiet scream, a muffled roar, and then drums and guitar blast together. The machine gun drums burst out in well paced bits, jumping out every time they are needed and silent when they are not. Another valley, the first verse, where we take in all the dark words by singer Noora Louhimo.

The volume of everything increases on the first chorus, but things slow a little for the second verse. This second verse is noticeably more aggressive than the previous, not eclipsing the rage of the chorus, but the drama has heightened.

The chorus hits a second time, no louder than the first time, but it stays with us longer, and leads us to the guitar solo.

Then everything drops off and we get this sad little poem:

“I'm a shadow in the corner,
Begging to be found.
Suffering in silence,
As the world spins round and round.”


Than one last time, the chorus hits, only with greater fury than before. Like an explosion of unbridled wraith is let loose when Noora sings and the bands erupts in violence metal music.

“Unholy savior awakens within.
Salvation in disguise,
The undreaming darkness,
A graven image, a hero to some,
Destroyer, cold as death,
The slayer of hearts.

Unholy savior, forever to be.
Salvation in disguise.
The undreaming darkness.

Salvation in disguise.”


It might be easy to handwave away “Unholy Savior” as a song about the devil, which would fit in nicely with my musical tastes, however I think this song is more universal than that. Battle Beast is a metal band in love with fantasy, it comes up in many of their songs, and they have an obvious fondness and the darker elementals of that genre. It is possible the “Unholy Savior” refers to a specific anti-hero in a fantasy story I cannot at this time pinpoint, or as I suspect, it is probably generic, to all dark heroes from all possible tales of fantasy adventure.

I love everything about “Unholy Savior.” It was possibly my favorite song of 2015.

- King of Braves

Saturday, December 9, 2017

Darkest of the Hillside Thickets - Nyarlathotep



The Crawling Chaos.
The Faceless God.
The messenger of the outer gods.
Nyarlathotep.

The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets is a perfect band for what I like to write about. Hailing from Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada, this lovable band of rock nerds have created something truly wonderful; a cheeky punk rock band whose majority of songs are half comedy half grim homages to H.P. Lovecraft.

It is a perfect idea for a rock band, and something I dearly needed in my life.

This light-hearted approach to Lovecraft is something of akin to the horror comedy genre of movies like “Evil Dead” or “Reanimator,” where humour is found amongst the deadly and horrible. Such things have always touched upon my sensibilities and dark sense of humour and after many years of gradually listening to more and more music by Darkest of the Hillside Thickets I have come to love the band and all that they do.

Despite the fact no one I know has ever heard of them, Darkest of the Hillside Thickets have been around since 1993. That is almost twenty-five years of being virtual unknowns, and once again I have the internet to thank for introducing them to me. A cult band if there ever was one, the Darkest of the Hillside Thickets have done a handful of small shows every few years in the British Columbia area, sometimes branching out into Washington state, maybe elsewhere, I do not know.

Way back in the day I hosted a radio show, and one night I was digging deep trying to find songs to play in a Lovecraft theme episode, and that was when I discovered Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. At the time I had only been listening to songs like “The Innsmouth Look” and “Yog-Sothoth.” It would take a long time to discover some of their best that came out later like “Shhh,” “Frogstar” and “The Math Song,” none of which have any notable connection to Lovecraft, but “You Fool Warren is Dead!” is absolutely about “The Statement of Randolph Carter,” and it is fantastic. However, my favorite, is one of the first I ever heard “Nyarlathotep.”

I am a man who deeply enjoys deep lyrics, but today will not be one of those days where I post some quote from the song in the blog and blab about how clever it is, because in “Nyarlathotep” the words are not in English. If the comment section on youtube.com is to be believed, Darkest of the Hillside Thickets are singing in ancient Egyptian. Upon further research I have since learned that the band reached out to their fans to help write “Nyarlathotep” finding a fan who actually spoke, or at least knew, middle Egyptian. That sort of artist fan relationship is very endearing.

Also judging from the comment section, the Japanese really like “Nyarlathotep.”

From what sounds like a tambourine, a death rattle is created, and it is the first sound in “Nyarlathotep,” the first sting that brings out the deathly ambient sound. Next the war drums hit and a rolling thunder carries us forward to the lead guitar and Egyptian vocal melody.

"Nyarlathotep"
by Erkanerturk
I have talked in the past about the sound of implied terror and horror, and “Nyarlathotep” has something of that, but also something else, it has that joyful levity. Like all the Darkest of the Hillside Thickets songs there is an ironic mirth added to the songs of dread; and dread is an appropriate description of the subject matter.

Everything Lovecraft wrote, and everything he created, was horrifying but also nihilistic, and the being Nyarlathotep is no exception. The space monsters in Lovecraft’s works are also ultra dimensional gods, and are often very difficult to describe because they are so alien. As I explained in the last review, Cthulhu physically is the most human, somehow, and as such he has proven to be the easiest for fans to rationalize in their minds and illustrate, and this probably goes a long way to explain Cthulhu’s popularity. The most human cosmic god Lovecraft created in personality is probably Nyarlathotep. None of the Lovecraft gods have any relatable human motivations or emotions, they are completely unrelatable, except for Nyarlathotep.

Using his shape shifting powers Nyarlathotep has through out history appeared as a human, most notably as an obsidian dark skinned Egyptian, who shows devices and objects of wonderful and terrible affects. His powers are many and he could cause massive harm at any time to all human civilization, but he relents, for Nyarlathotep enjoys toying with humans, we are his play things, his greatest source of amusement. Nyarlathotep’s playfulness and cruelty are inherently human traits, his dark sense of humour and manipulative manner is the behavior of a trickster, and humans can relate to that.

This video from the Exploring Series explains Nyarlathotep better than I can:

The Exploring Series - Nyarlathotep:

I really like the Exploring Series, he talks about all my favorite things, Middle Earth, Elder Scrolls, and Lovecraft. We should probably hang out.

In summary, some nerds in British Columbia decided to make punk band where they combine horror and comedy to sing about a variety things, but namely Lovecraft’s mythos, and I like them because their fun.

- King of Braves