Reviews list for Battleaxe - Burn This Town (1983)

This debut release comes from a four-piece outfit from Sunderland, England who began life under the name of Warrior in 1980 before later swapping to the slightly cooler & metal-as-fuck moniker of Battleaxe. The band initially cut their teeth in the local live music scene & worked hard on developing a tight, heavy & well-defined sound before recording a demo tape by the name of “Burn This Town”. Thankfully Roadrunner Records liked what they heard & agreed to release the first full-length Battleaxe studio album (also entitled “Burn This Town”) in 1983. And it’s this release that we’ll be discussing here today.

Once the master tapes were supplied to Roadrunner, the label asked the band for their ideas for an album cover concept, at which time Battleaxe engaged a friend of theirs to draw up a rough sketch of a metal warrior on a motorcycle holding aloft a large battleaxe in the centre of a burning town. The idea was that the band would send the draft to the label & once it was approved they’d have the artist put together a much more detailed & impressive final product. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Roadrunner weren’t on the same wavelength & went ahead & printed 2000 copies of the album with the draft cover art. Now if you aren’t already familiar with it I encourage you to press the BACK button & check out this artwork immediately because it’s gone down in metal folklore as one of the most amateurish album covers in metal history. It’s really quite embarrassing, but thankfully for Battleaxe it didn’t do their careers any harm as the album sold quite well. Possibly more so due to the attention it received over the hilarious cover art.

The music on “Burn This Town” is anything but amateurish though with Battleaxe proving themselves to be quite capable metal musicians. The production is very good for a debut NWOBHM release too as it achieves good separation between the instruments without losing any of the band’s raw energy. Stylistically this is just about as NWOBHM as it gets. In fact, it’s almost like a tribute to the movement as it celebrates all of the trademark characteristics of the New Wave while making no attempt to add anything new to the equation. This is fast & energetic stuff with Judas Priest, Saxon & AC/DC being the main influences on display but I can definitely pick up a little bit of Motorhead thrown in here & there too. The simple & traditional song structures are quite well composed & executed to be fair but there’s a distinct lack of the X-factor required to make this a memorable listen & as a result I find Battleaxe to sound like a more than decent NWOBHM covers band. They simply lack the class to compete on the same level as their more well-known peers. Vocalist Dave King is a prime example as he can certainly sing in tune but his voice is lacking in charisma & identity.

It’s not all bad news here though as there are a fair few fun metal tracks on offer. It’s just that none of them are good enough to balance out the 3 or 4 weaker numbers. Overall, you won’t find “Burn This Town” to be an offensive listen but I doubt you’ll find yourself feeling much urge to return for repeat listens.