This new album is already making a space for itself in my 'Top Five' 2019 list, ready to fight off all comers.

Battle Beast's last album 'Bringer Of Pain' made my 2017 Top Five so 'No More Hollywood Endings' had a lot to live up to. Therefore, the most obvious question must be... does it do that? To be honest, our Reviews Editor mentioned to me after his initial demo of a few tracks that the bite seemed to have gone from some of their music and initially I thought he could be right about this. However, after half-a-dozen spins or more of this new release, it just clicked with me; I then understood what the band have done and had to do on 'No More Hollywood Endings' [I agree having now done the same – Ed].

The brash, highly enjoyable and at times harder-edged Power/Pop Metal of the last couple of albums has been supplanted by a more mature, grown-up sound with the group developing both as musicians and as song-writers. It's the subtle nature of these new songs that takes a while for the listener to get to grips with; however, when they do... wow! What a musical treat you're in for.

'Unbroken' launches the new record in fine style with the keyboards of Janne Björkroth joining wonderfully with the guitars of Joona Björkroth and Juuso Soinio. Moulding everything together, bringing all the "Beast" elements of melody and musicianship into focus is the fantastic voice of Noora Louhimo whose performance throughout is simply breathtaking. The title track comes next and it shows off this new-found song-writing maturity that I spoke of above; it's a classy number if ever there was one.

The ante is then raised with killer songs such as the hook-laden 'Eden', the superb AOR-tastic 'Endless Summer' and the ultra-catchy 'The Hero' where Louhimo shows off her more aggressive vocal side. Then there's the cool sounding 'Piece Of Me', the killer ballad 'I Wish', where again Louhimo shines, and finally the band hit us with some old-school Battle Beast tracks in the shape of 'Raise Your Fists', 'Golden Horde' and 'World On Fire'.

As I mentioned, 'Bringer Of Pain' made my Top Five a couple of years ago and this new album is already making a space for itself in my 2019 list, ready to fight off all comers. It might have taken a while to gel with me, but now that it has I wonder if any of the other Melodic Power/Pop Metal acts doing the rounds will be able to better this album – we'll see!

Ian Johnson