Switzerland seems to try to stock up on traditional Metal. This is the only reasonable explanation I can find for the recent influx of traditional sounds from Helvetia and one look at the album and song titles of BATTALION's first effort makes it very clear that they are part of it. Titles such as "The Fight For Metal", "Headbangers" or "Gods Of Metal" sound as if they came straight from the Eighties and once you put the CD in, you know that they hail from that glorious decade, even though the band only was founded in 2001.

They had released a demo under their original name CORPUS DELICTI, but under this moniker this is the first release and from the get to the influences shine through loud and clear: IRON MAIDEN, JUDAS PRIEST and a little of Scandinavia here and there, completely unoriginal, but still very catchy and played with conviction, so at least there is nothing calculated here. Quite the contrary, because the brash and at times a little raw charm of the compositions shows that they live the spirit of the Eighties, they just were born a little late to fully participate back then.

The title track is a swift Heavy Metal breaker, fully in the 80s' tradition, musically as lyrically, setting the pace for the coming songs as well. Be it more stomping as on "Headbangers", driving mid-tempo like with "The Raven" (good melodies, btw), balladesque ("Through The Night") or heavier as on "Find Our Way", everything screams 80s, so how much you like that decade will influence how much you might like "The Fight For Metal"... Two tracks have to be mentioned separately, for one the strong epos "Stalingrad", which reminds me a lot of IRON MAIDEN, as it has this spoken part in the middle, in German from the perspective of a German soldier, which might lead some people onto the wrong path, and the "bonus track", a different version of "Headbangers", where the only difference is that the vocals are not clear, but growled, could really have done without that one...

So do they have potential? Definitely. Are they fully using it yet? Oh no. Is "The Fight For Metal" recommended? Somewhat, if you have a soft spot for the pure sound of the 80s!

(Online February 5, 2007)