Saturday, May 11, 2024

The Battlebeats - Meet Your Maker


I was quite surprised when I realized that The Battlebeats' new album Meet Your Maker is only the band's second full-length album — and first in four years! Andresa Nugraha has kept his one-man-band in the conversation with a series of killer 7" releases on various labels, but Meet Your Maker is the first proper album from The Battlebeats since Search and Destroy was released back in March of 2020. Funny how that album came out, and the world was never the same. Not surprisingly, there has been quite a musical growth between albums. Andresa is clearly a better musician than he was four years ago, and that's a good thing since he literally plays everything on this record. And as a songwriter, he's come quite a way from simply worshipping at the altar of Teengenerate (not that there was anything wrong with that!). On Meet Your Maker, we're hearing a less lo-fi, harder-edged, and more ferocious-sounding Battlebeats. Elements of action rock, high octane '90s punk rock 'n' roll, and blood & guts American punk rock have been injected into the mix, but overall this is still garage punk at its absolute finest. The running joke about one-man-groups is that you don't have to worry about creative differences breaking up the band. But you do have to figure how to keep your band progressing in a way that makes sense. Meet Your Maker is a considerable progression from Search and Destroy, but it still sounds like The Battlebeats. When it comes to modern-day garage punk rock 'n' roll, it just doesn't get much better than this. Andresa has developed into a fantastic guitarist and more confident vocalist, and he has expanded on his musical influences without fundamentally altering his approach to songwriting. What results is an absolute ripper of an album that you all need to own. Vinyl is out on Sweet Time Records in multiple colors. Go!
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