Battlesword – Banners Of Destruction

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It is no secret here that I love melodic death metal. To me it is one of the best contribution to Metal ever. Metal is a style of constrasts, and that’s what attracts me most since I heard The Priest’s guitar work in “Unleashed in the East.” The contrast between the distorced guitars and the melody they could bring out as twins made me just love that. Melodic death metal extrapolates this formula with the gutural vocals and melodic guitars. Music has to make you florish your emotions. It has to make to feel angry, nervous, or make you cry. Music has to be burning hot in the sense of emotion. No warmness should allowded. That’s why I do not like the warmth of pop music. It is so overproduced that it arises no emotion. Melodeath is just the opposite with the contrast between hellish vocals and angelical guitars.

“Banners Of Destruction” is a remarkable album with Axel’s thick and gritty voice and some uncanny, but effective guitar solutions. Battlesword were a great surprise as a mature and competent band in the genre they chose to play. Battlesword made it easy to be reviewed because they are a hot band in the sense I told before. “Banners Of Destruction” is full of emotion. Not warm and overproduced. Guitars are free to fly, even if some note sounds weird. When critics talk about musical honesty, Battlesword turn out to be a good example. Not that cheap and cheesy canned emotion that makes the unsuspected think life is full of rainbows and beautiful naked girls. Real life is a bit more complicated and Metal shows that. I guess that it is why poppers hate us so much. We are true.

“Banners Of Destruction’s” twelve tracks are true gems of Metal. No canned emotion. Just the crude and cruel reality of humankind condition translated into guitar riffs, drums beats, pounding bass and raw vocals. We do not need more. Simple as that.

So a big hail to Battlesword!

Track Listing:

  1. Spirit to the Flesh
  2. The Unnamed Magic
  3. Banners of Destruction
  4. Grave New World
  5. The Silence of Victory
  6. Tongues of Hatred
  7. Circle of Witches
  8. Bloodlust Symphony
  9. Left for the Vultures
  10. There Will Be Blood
  11. Where Demons Awake
  12. Enemy Divine

Watch Battlesword “Tongues of Hatred” at Metaldays Festival here: