Live Review : Battle Beast + Future Palace @ Academy Club, Manchester on September 16th 2022

Another day, another Finnish band to go and watch, hurrah! Tonight is another step outside my musical comfort zone, I’m not familiar with either band although I have seen and enjoyed a band connected to the headliners via their former guitarist, so I settle into my usual spot at the back and get ready to have a good old listen. This is because Club Academy, although a decent size and with decent sound, is a basement venue with a low stage and a lot of random pillars dotted about the place. The chances of a short person like me actually seeing much of the band is fairly minimal, although I do occasionally catch a glimpse of the tops of their heads!

Future Palace are a female-fronted band from Berlin, enjoying their first visit to the UK. They have a kind of goth meets industrial meets nu-metal sound, and the vocals I think area little lacking in power although she had a decent range. When she’s singing clean there are hints of Hayley from Paramore, but she also does a bit of unintelligible growling that I’m a little puzzled by. After all, if you CAN sing, why wouldn’t you? The band is a 3-piece (guitars, drums and vocals) and relies heavily on backing tracks to fill in the bass parts and add various synthesised sounds. This trend towards using click-track seems to be on an upwards trajectory at the moment, and being old (school) I find it irritating and find myself tutting a bit and shaking my head. They get a decent crowd response, but for me personally although they are competent I’m just not seeing the special yet. 

Battle Beast on the other hand are the bastard children of Manowar and Abba. They play power metal with just a touch of pop around the edges, and they do it really well. Singer Noora is an incredible presence on the stage, and while the band are really good musicians and they are very much a band, the show is really about her. They bring their own lights, they bring their own keyboard/synth sounds and they even bring on a device that seems to be some kind of light-up electronic drum kit. This is brought into use during the disco portion of the set – yes, there is a disco interlude which is not something you see every day at a rock show. Unlike the openers the stage is heaving with band members, a drummer, a bassist, two guitars, a bloke who switches between a keytar and guitar (and also plays the disco thingy) and someone lurking at the side of the stage doing keyboardy stuff and jumping up and down a lot. This means that the sound is rich and full, with a lot going on. The music is hard, but with a softer edge. It’s like getting punched with a silk glove and then stroked with it afterwards. With some pyro the whole set is just wrapped up in a blanket of joyfulness. There are epic songs that combine big riffs and soaring vocals with catchy choruses and a nodding-dog beat. They make me smile, a lot. 

There’s heads-down hair-swirling metal with all the cliches performed with love and you can’t help warming to it. The sound is spot-on and the musicianship is superb. The ballad is a welcomed surprise, being a beasted-up version of the theme song from Disney’s Aladdin. Done with straight faces and again much attention to detail, they turn ‘A Whole New World’ into a whole new song. Back to the epicness, and I feel like I should be waving a flag or storming a fortress or something. The songs are full of derring-do. There’s a bit of Cossack-inspired rock disco crossover (That reminds me of Kiss’s ‘I Was Made For Loving You’) and the main set then goes into an encore featuring a blistering guitar solo. It’s all very inspiring, very uplifting and there’s that song that sounds like the Imperial March from Star Wars - I feel that if we were an Empire we would definitely be striking back at this point in the proceedings. The final song is a perfect slice of rocked-out Europop, it’s Abba on steroids, and I can’t help thinking that if Finland ever lets Battle Beast do their Eurovision entry they are pretty much guaranteed a win. There’s nothing like a night of well-performed live music to lift the spirits, and tonight it was golden.