Friday 27 May 2016

Battalions - "Nothing to Lose" (Album Review)

By: Hunter Young

Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 21/01/2016
Label: Independent

Battalions laces up their good shit kickers on “Nothing to Lose”, ready to walk into a punk show, empty pool, construction site, whatever, and proceed to kick your collective teeth in and throw you into a handy wall until you buy a shirt or something, and rock the fuck out. This is heavy music, and QUALITY heavy music. These guys have crafted something that should get your soul to wake up and take notice. Get this album, and keep bands like this pumping up music to bother the neighbours with.


“Nothing to Lose” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1). A Cowards Manifesto
2). Hoods up, Knives Out!
3). You Have Nothing to Lose but Your Son and Your Souls
4). Whisky and Wine
5). Blood Bed
6). Bog Faced Roy
7). Deadbeat Dad Beat Dead
8). Shitstorm Troopers


The Review:

Up on the offering block today is the new find from scorn metal merchants Battalions, “Nothing to Lose”. Pumping heavy metal fists into the air and throwing down some destructive riffs, Battalions lobs a ball of fun and heavy music at our faces, filled with 8 tracks of relentless Heavy Metal.

Battalions brings an arsenal of influence to bear upon this album, from crunching slowness to sludge stomping, southern raw to eerily close D Beat down riffage, Battalions want to scrape your face off in varying degrees of metallic mayhem. Heavy on the gain and drive, they play aggressively behind a singer drowning in his own scorn. Your ears will be raked raw as he belts out every word, punching like a rusted ice pick out of the speakers.

“Nothing to Lose” is a bounce house filled with metallic mastery, combining slowly building grooves with the crass stress of the vocals to plant some great payoffs. Slowly stomping towards you is the opener, “Coward's Manifesto”. This track leads off like a power hitter, dragging your through clinging bleakness, unrelenting and taking its own damn time. “…Manifesto” is a superb showing of what they do when just chugging along, but is not as vicious as the next track, “Hoods Up, Knives Out”.  Full of a punky energy, its mid tempo and establishes a vortex of energy that this band would draw live. It even has a sweet little lead and it honestly just gets more destructive from there, with the towering “You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Sons and Your Souls” slowly pressing down like a giant's foot upon your back. When these guys want to, which is constantly, they bring the heavy like they've been here for a few years.

Two of the biggest bangers though are “Whisky & Wine” and “Blood Bed”. With a hint of Dopethrone on a vicious whisky bender, grinding and chipping away with some of the most pendulous riffage outside of that genre blaze haze, dragging you naked across concrete soaked in beer and cigarette butts from the show. It'll be a hit at your next social gathering, trust me! As for “Blood Bed”, pure, blues bliss. This is where their stride could go for days, but sadly it only lasts 2 minutes and 23 seconds. This WILL get you to move with the beat. I don't know where they dredged this up, but it's southern as hell and it's the hit for this album. You can fight me, but I'll put you to sleep with this on repeat.

“Big Faced Roy (unluckily) follows “Blood Bed”, and carries some of the same swagger, but follows more closely with “Whisky...;” and id another screaming meanie that has a mean riff streak running down its bared backbone. Sliding from there, we have “Deadbeat Dad Beat Dead”, which has the most diversified lead/riff of the album, and is reminiscent of Brand New Sin and Juggernaut (South African southern metal), with that brutal scraping vocal that has me with Stockholm Syndrome. It'll have you flailing along in no time!

Album ender, “Shitstorm Troopers”, is a heavy as hell doomtroopin good time, as they progress up and down the frets with power chugging and violence at the forefront. Battalions laces up their good shit kickers on “Nothing to Lose”, ready to walk into a punk show, empty pool, construction site, whatever, and proceed to kick your collective teeth in and throw you into a handy wall until you buy a shirt or something, and rock the fuck out.

This is heavy music, and QUALITY heavy music. These guys have crafted something that should get your soul to wake up and take notice. Get this album, and keep bands like this pumping up music to bother the neighbors with.

 “Nothing to Lose” is available here



Band info: bandcamp || facebook