BATTLERAGE, Battlefield Supremacy (2012, Metal on Metal)

The skull:
“Dude, I fucking owned the battlefield! I showed up, and I killed pretty much every fucking body. They came at me with axes, swords, maces, pikes, you name it, and I fucking knocked that shit down and killed some motherfuckers! You should have fucking seen it! God damn, it was beautiful.” “Bullshit, man! You got fucking killed just like the rest of us!” “No, man, I wasn’t talking about this battlefield. Duh. I mean, yeah, obviously my supremacy of this battlefield was contested and pretty harshly rebuked. I’m talking about that last battlefield. The one from last week. I was totally supreme there!” “That’s not what I heard. I heard some fucking wizard showed up and killed everyone with like a green cloud or something, and then took off, and then you showed up late because you were taking a dump and then you ran your mouth off and took all the credit” “Fuck you, man, that’s bullshit! Cause like, if that happened, how would anyone know about the wizard, because they all got killed. People are just fucking jealous the way I totally supremed that battlefield, and they made up that shit about the wizard.” “Whatever, man. Who cares anyway. We got killed this time.” “Yeah, but still. That last battlefield… so fucking supreme!”

The music:
This is a weird, stupid compilation of Battlerage’s first album, Steel Supremacy, and four songs from their “EP” Battlefield Belongs to Me. I put EP in quotes because the original release is 50 minutes long and has twelve tracks. Did I mention that Battlefield Supremacy is a cassette-only release, limited to 66 copies? I see that I didn’t, except to say that this thing is stupid. Which it is. Anyway, Battlerage are fine. They’re somewhere between German speed metal and South American true metal. Don’t expect sophistication or innovation, but if you own and enjoy a lot of albums with axe-wielding musclemen on the cover, then you’ll love this shit. I’m not overly impressed, but I’ll grant that Battlerage do their thing well, and the singer is surprisingly good, especially for a Chilean singing in English. Even the sound is good, and you know that’s not a given for this kind of thing. Of course, if you really wanted to hear Battlerage, you’d probably just pick up the CDs, or download it, or whatever, and not trawl eBay for a ridiculously limited cassette without any exclusive songs, but hey, don’t let me tell you how to live your life.
— Friar Johnsen