The Industrial Twilight: Omen - "Battle Cry" [1984]

Thursday, June 15, 2017

Omen - "Battle Cry" [1984]

Artist: Omen

Title: Battle Cry

Genre: Heavy Metal

Country: USA

Release date: 1984

Track List:

Death Rider
The Axeman
Last Rites
Dragon's Breath
Be My Wench
Battle Cry
Die by the Blade
Prince of Darkness
Bring Out the Beast
In the Arena

A true classic of the 80's US melodic metal scene, "Battle Cry" is the first (and the best) release by Omen. The sound on this album is a direct continuation of the early 80's NWOBHM scene, yet Omen did it in their own unique and easily distinguishable way. Nearly all songs on this album are extremely catchy, but my personal favourites are "Death Rider", "Battle Cry", "Prince of Darkness" and "In the Arena".

The lyrics are very stereotypical for a traditional heavy metal band at a first glance, with its heavy use of words like "fight", "warrior", "sword", "dragon", etc., etc., yet they are nowhere near as ridiculous as the lyrics for many songs by Manowar, for example, and they actually portray a quite historically accurate picture of life during the medieval times, without glamourizing it too much as many heavy/power metal bands do in their lyrics. Overall, this is an awesome release which is undoubtely a classic of early US heavy metal scene, and it definitely shouldn't be missed. Enjoy:

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About this blog

I created this blog mostly because I wanted to practise my English skills, and to showcase the industrial, gothic, punk, metal, neofolk and progressive rock scene of Russia/ex-USSR and Eastern Europe (especially Hungary) in the meanwhile.

As you can see, this blog doesn't take itself seriously enough, but I hope I'm doing good enough with my reviews even if my proficiency in English is limited. Along with the aforementioned stuff from Eastern Europe, I occasionally post some classic and rare albums that aren't to be missed, and generally whatever I want. Other categories of note:

* finno-ugric rarities - various music (including pop) in minor Finno-Ugric languages which I'm interested in because of my heritage. The music from Hungary, Finland and Estonia can be found under the respective categories;

* lo-fi - various poorly recorded demos from before 2000 that are of historical importance. Most of these demos come from the USSR era, so you might want to check out the USSR category as well.

As of now, I try to post only music that has already been made free by the artists themselves, or the rare old releases that are out of print. But if you're an artist and would like me to remove the download links of your work, just contact me using the form below.

Sorry, I don't do reviews by request, I don't have the time. Moreover, I think the bands that feel the need to advertise themselves by sending their demos to as many blogs as possible are usually just plain boring. If you want to contact me for any other reason, use the contact form below.

It should be obvious enough that reviewing anything on here doesn't equals endorsement of artists' personal views. This especially concerns neofolk and martial industrial. It'd be fair enough to say that I have the same approach to the political and religious topics in these genres as Laibach do.

Many of the female musicians featured on my blog are amateur models, and in many cases their modelling work is no less interesting than their music. Right now I'm working on giving it a separate section of the blog (just in case if anyone wants my review to be only about their music and not their looks). The work is in progress, check back later if you're interested.

The title of my blog comes from a song by The Kovenant (album "SETI", 2003).