Beast in Black

The Arc of Beast in Black

The pivots — what forced Beast in Black to reinvent.

1. 01

   The Spiteful Rebound

   After losing the rights to his previous band name in 2015, Kabanen recruited ex-U.D.O. guitarist Kasperi Heikkinen and former Wardrum singer Yannis Papadopoulos to cut 'Berserker' on Nuclear Blast. Released in 2017, the record served as an undeniable statement of ownership over his signature sound, matching Kentaro Miura's dark fantasy themes with hyperactive twin-lead guitars. Tracks like 'Blind and Frozen' instantly established the formula: four-on-the-floor dance beats underneath shred guitars, topped by Papadopoulos's staggering vocal acrobatics.

2. 02

   Leaning into the Dancefloor

   With 2019's 'From Hell With Love' and 2021's 'Dark Connection', Kabanen stopped pretending he was just making traditional heavy metal and cranked the 80s arcade synth aesthetic wide open. 'Dark Connection' went all-in on cyberpunk synthwave and Eurobeat grooves, putting synthesizers fully in front of the guitars on tracks like 'One Night in Tokyo'. Drummer Atte Palokangas locked down the mechanical, sequencer-tight rhythms while the band openly embraced anime soundtrack melodrama and Hi-NRG pop structures without losing their power metal core.

Influences

• Judas Priest — Kabanen regularly cites Judas Priest's 1980s output—specifically 'Turbo' and 'Painkiller'—as the structural blueprint for his guitar tone and dynamic shifts. Yannis Papadopoulos openly borrows Rob Halford's dual approach of guttural grit and glass-shattering head voice. You hear it front and center in the screaming high notes and driving rhythm of 'Beast in Black'.
• Nightwish — The bombastic Finnish symphonic power metal arrangement style engineered by Tuomas Holopainen heavily informed Kabanen's approach to layered, orchestral MIDI programming. Beast in Black takes that Finnish melodeath-adjacent keyboard wall and repurposes it into commercial hook writing. Nightwish proved a Finnish metal band could conquer Europe with theatrical melodrama, and Beast in Black inherited that playbook.
• Accept — Before joining Beast in Black, guitarist Kasperi Heikkinen played alongside Accept icon Udo Dirkschneider in U.D.O., anchoring the band's direct lineage to classic German heavy metal. The gang vocal choruses and rigid, march-like guitar riffs throughout their catalog pull straight from Accept's 'Balls to the Wall' era. It is classic Teutonic crunch disguised beneath modern synths.
• W.A.S.P. — Kabanen has repeatedly cited Blackie Lawless as a primary songwriting and vocal influence, frequently dropping W.A.S.P. deep cuts into conversation. The raw, desperate vocal delivery in Beast in Black's mid-tempo anthems mirrors the theatrical metal grit of 'The Crimson Idol'. That influence showed up explicitly when the band tracked a studio cover of 'Wild Child'.
• Susumu Hirasawa — The conceptual core of Beast in Black is directly tied to the anime 'Berserk', for which Japanese composer Susumu Hirasawa wrote the iconic score. Kabanen has credited Hirasawa's avant-garde blend of electronics and soaring choral orchestrations as a massive inspiration for his thematic writing. You can hear that distinct epic, eastern-influenced electronic pacing underlying the chord progressions of 'The Beast'.