Battle Boys

Sometimes bands try to mask their terrible ability to write music with the evil word..."Fun". If it's fun, you can't say the music is bad. Because fun things are fun!-a bug-eyed ditzy individual once said. The sort of release where there's nothing particularly interesting about the music other than some sort of amusing theme to the album or some sort of running joke to rely upon has become more and more common in power metal in recent years.

HOWEVER

This album is NOT one of those releases. I will die as a martyr to defend this album from the imaginary radical group called Antifun, as their hate will be misdirected to an album that is actually good, despite the humour present across this release.

Boys of Battle combine pure idiocy in lyrical form with actually good power metal writing. Soaring riffs, excellent vocal flourishes, double bass runs, they've got it all. YEAHs, WOAH OHs, all that sort of stuff. Extremely addictive riffs and vocal hooks show up on just about every song. Now yes, the lyrics may be about putting someone's head on a stick for having eaten your strawberry ice cream, but they're delivered in a way completely fitting of power metal, and rather competently at that.

The main thing I like about the album musically is the excellent use of vocal flourishes. Everyone's favorite is the track Slurpa Durp, which features lovely background vocals at parts chanting the band's name "Boys of Battle" at the end of the song in an inspiring manner, as if this epic hearkening at the end of the track is truly the essence of the band Boys of Battle, the leitmotif of the band, per se. I gotta love that stuff. We've got a cute a capella segment at the end of Head Full O'Lead, although this doesn't work quite as well. Let's not forget the absolutely legendary OH HO HO flourishes of King of a Kingdom. It feels like they may have written songs around how they wanted to include vocal flourishes. Often they are the focus of the song and are extremely memorable. The lyrics in between are stupid as hell but they sound great anyway, so I don't have any complaints.

Instrumentation-wise, let me point out that Boys of Battle consists of members of the prog band Moron Police. So what you'll enjoy hearing throughout the album is little pepperings of their prog influences coming through. Interesting experimental segments popping in amidst the standard power metal writing. What does this mean? It means you can't criticize them for being basic simplistic chorus-verse-chorus power metal because they actually do more than that. See? Did they just play a jazz interlude? That sounds good? I thought this was a joke band. No. No. They are actually good. Look at the song Sakura, it dives into an acoustic and synth calm soundscape that provides wonderful variance to the album, without falling into the pit of crappy ballad territory.

Now that isn't to say some of their lyrical stupidity doesn't come off as plain annoying in some cases―sometimes they ham it up a bit too much―but these are very short segments that are easy to ignore. The intro track, for example, although it may be simply there to joke around about how many power albums have a useless intro track, doesn't add much to the album. In fact, the pure nonsense that erupts from the first few seconds of track 2, Schoolyard Inferno would be an excellent opening to the album just as well. Swoppey's intro is also a bit much. I'd say the weakest track is Battlehymn, which while having small bits with nice guitar licks coming in in the background, the overall track is in fact very basic power metal. The "amusement" in this song is supposed to come from the dumb lyrics exclusively in this song's case. This is where the album loses a bit of charm. There are still great choir vocals on the song, despite its simplicity.

In the end, the previously discussed track Slurpa Durp is an excellent power metal song. If you get anything out of this review, it's to give that song a listen regardless of the dumb lyrics. And then the chorus, and the ending high note. I am now feeling the heart of power metal inside. I wish more recent releases exuded the feel of this song. AND SOOOOOOOOOO WE BATTLE...