BEAST IN BLACK Trivia — 153 Entries
153 sourced facts about BEAST IN BLACK.
Trivia
The band called its first trip to Japan one of its biggest dreams. The announcement of 26 December 2017 said three shows would follow in May 2018 and framed them exactly that way. The dates were 24 May at Shinsaibashi Soma in Osaka, 25 May at Holiday Next in Nagoya and 26 May at Shinjuku Blaze in Tokyo — a little over six months after the debut album came out.
On the second visit their billing changed. A post of 22 March 2019 said they were heading back to Japan in May for three shows, but this time as headliners: 22 May at Umeda Zeela in Osaka and 24 and 25 May at Akabane ReNY alpha in Tokyo, two nights running in the capital.
The 2023 Japanese run gave each night its own name. The dedicated page put up by Ward Records, the band's Japanese label, shows Two Nights In Tokyo 2023 as a pair: "Shibuya Night Carnival" at Club Quattro in Shibuya on 15 May and "Shinjuku Night Party" at Shinjuku Blaze on 16 May. Tickets went on general sale on 4 February; doors were at 18:00 for a 19:00 start, advance admission cost 9,500 yen, and a VIP ticket at 15,000 yen included a signed card and a photo with the band.
The 2024 Tokyo shows sold a ticket that let you drink with the band afterwards. Ward Records' page for the two nights at Zepp Shinjuku gives doors at 17:15, Turmion Kätilöt on as opening act at 18:00 and Beast In Black at 19:15, with a general ticket at 9,800 yen and a 25,000-yen "KANPAI!!" ticket alongside it. The latter included a post-show toast with the band, viewing from the front area, a photograph with the members and a hand-signed card.
One Beast In Black CD exists only in Japan. On 6 December 2024 the band announced that the single "Power Of The Beast" had been issued in physical form by their Japanese partner Ward Records, with three live tracks from that year's Tokyo shows — "One Night In Tokyo", "Blind And Frozen" and "Sweet True Lies", recorded at Kabukicho Madhouse — added to the title track.
The idea came from the Japanese side. In the same announcement Máté Molnár said that old-timers like them, who collect CDs and vinyl, love having their own songs in a physical format rather than only online — and that since the idea had come from their Japanese label, Ward Records, adding live tracks from their most recent Tokyo shows was an obvious choice. He noted that the band had never done that before.
The live tracks on the Japanese CD were recorded on the singer's birthday. Ward Records' product page gives the Japan-only Power Of The Beast CD as a strictly limited pressing released on 6 December 2024 (catalogue number GQCS-91541) with Japanese liner notes and translated lyrics. The three live tracks come from the Kabukicho Madhouse shows of 22 and 23 May that year, and the label records that the occasion coincided with Yannis Papadopoulos's birthday, which it says lifted both the audience and the band to another level.
The 2026 Japanese dates sit inside a wider Asian trip. A post of 13 May 2026 announced two headline nights at Zepp DiverCity in Tokyo on 19 and 20 September, followed by Taipei on the 22nd, Shanghai on the 24th and Beijing on the 25th. Taiwan and China are both new territory for the band.
The band picked its own birthday. In October 2015 the official site reported on a weekend the five of them had just spent in Helsinki — the first time they had all met each other, and the first rehearsals for a debut show still a month away — and stated that it counted the 8th of October 2015 as the foundation of Beast In Black. It is the date the band still marks its anniversaries by.
The first five were only all in one room for the first time that weekend. When the official site announced the founding it listed them: Yannis Papadopoulos on vocals, Anton Kabanen and Kasperi Heikkinen on guitars, Máté Molnár on bass and Sami Hänninen on drums.
The deal and the album were announced in the same breath. On 31 August 2017 the band's site said it had signed a worldwide record deal with Nuclear Blast and that the debut, Berserker, would arrive in November. Kabanen's comment in that announcement was that their wildest dreams had come true in signing with what he called the biggest and best heavy metal label in the world.
The man who drew the sleeve came across from the previous band too. The August 2017 announcement states that the cover artwork for Berserker marks the return of the collaboration between Kabanen and Roman Ismailov, and that Ismailov was the original illustrator and graphic artist for Battle Beast.
The opening track and the band share a source. On Nuclear Blast's album page Kabanen explains that "Beast In Black", like the band's name, was inspired by a character from the Berserk manga, and that while the lyrics connect directly to that character they are also speaking in metaphor about something personal. He calls it one of the most powerful songs on the record and rates Kasperi's solo on it as probably the best on the album.
One song on the debut had already been passed over once. On the Nuclear Blast album page Kabanen reveals that "Blood Of A Lion" was a candidate for Battle Beast's Unholy Savior and that he decided against using it then. It ended up on the first Beast In Black album instead, as the track with its biggest sing-along chorus.
Their very first concert was in an arena, opening for Nightwish. The announcement of 25 October 2015 gave the date as 13 November that year at the Metro Areena in Espoo, and even printed the running order: doors at 18:30, Beast In Black at 20:15, Nightwish at 21:30. It fell barely five weeks after the 8 October the band counts as its founding.
Their first headline shows came as a pair, on one weekend. The announcement of 12 December 2017 gave them as 9 February 2018 at Lutakko in Jyväskylä and 10 February at Nosturi in Helsinki — both at home in Finland.
The founding drummer's exit was announced together with his own explanation. On 7 February 2018 the band welcomed Atte Palokangas and published a statement from Sami Hänninen alongside it. Hänninen wrote that new circumstances in his life had made the coming shows and tours impossible for him, and that he had been struggling with a nerve problem in his left hand which left it numb and powerless and made drumming extremely difficult and at times painful. He also wrote that there was no bad blood between him and the rest of the band.
The band published an average attendance for its arena run. The year-end summary for 2018 records six weeks supporting Nightwish on the Decades arena tour, playing to an average of 10,000 people a night — three years after opening for the same band at its very first concert.
The second album was recorded between festival appearances. The band's 2018 year-end summary lists eighteen summer festivals and, in the same breath, records the second Beast In Black album being made during that same festival season — stages at the weekend, studio on the weekdays.
One song off the debut did most of the work of introducing the band. The 2018 year-end summary records the "Blind And Frozen" video passing ten million YouTube views in under fourteen months, and notes that "Sweet True Lies", the lead single from album two, gathered 770,000 views in its first month.
Because nearly every Finnish show had sold out, the band decided to book one big room. The announcement of 20 May 2019 says that with almost every concert at home selling out they had agreed to stage a large event at the end of the year where all their fans could gather and celebrate with them. It became 13 December at the Helsinki Ice Hall, with Lordi as very special guest.
The Helsinki Ice Hall drew 4,500 people. The day after, on 14 December 2019, the band wrote that they now knew what it felt like to play to 4,500 true fans and that the night was a milestone in their history. Nuclear Blast later set that figure next to another: ten months earlier they had played the same city to an audience of 1,500.
The first gold disc was announced on the same day as the Ice Hall show. On 14 December 2019 the band said it had received its first gold record for the Finnish sales of Berserker — and a separate post that day thanked the 4,500 people who had been at the Helsinki Ice Hall the night before.
At the third attempt the band won its category at Finland's music awards. On 7 May 2022 the official site called being named Metal of the Year at the EMMA-Gaala an honour — the same award the band had described in its own year-end note as the Finnish Grammy.
The third album was built on Japanese cyberpunk anime. The statement Kabanen published alongside the sleeve on 20 August 2021 names Armitage III, Cyber City Oedo 808, AD Police, Battle Angel Alita and Bubblegum Crisis as sources of inspiration, together with Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. Flying cars, valleys of neon, emotionless killers, gynoids and femmes fatales are, in his words, what Dark Connection holds.
The third album is dedicated to a manga artist who died while it was being made. In the statement issued with the artwork, Kabanen wrote that a Beast In Black album would not be one without the heavy impact of Berserk, that its author Kentaro Miura had passed away while they were still making this record, and that Dark Connection is therefore dedicated to him.
When Kentaro Miura died, Kabanen wrote about what the band owed him. In the tribute posted to the official site on 20 May 2021 he said Miura's influence had resonated in the deepest parts of his humanity as a person and as an artist, and that without Berserk the story of Beast In Black would never even have begun. He closed by promising to honour that memory by never ceasing to write songs about the series.
Kabanen judges a song by what survives being stripped down. On Nuclear Blast's Dark Connection page he says the best and strongest songs are the ones that can be turned into acoustic versions — guitar or piano plus a voice — without the melody losing its essence. He adds that he got genuinely excited about this material while it was still in midi-demo form, and reasons that if you cannot get enough of a melody that early, there must be something memorable in it.
One of Kabanen's stated inspirations is a games console's sound chip. On the Nuclear Blast page for Dark Connection he asks whether the reader remembers the old music from the Nintendo and Super Nintendo, and argues that very simple sound chips and limited resources are exactly what pushed those composers into writing ageless melodies.
The third album went to number one at home. The band's own 2021 year-end summary lists reaching good positions on international charts with the new album, and names the Finnish number one.
A music video turned into something you could play. On 8 November 2021 the band launched a beat 'em up built around "One Night In Tokyo" and published a comment from its developer, Claudio Cimini. He said the game had been made in a month of concentrated work with Brillantina Moretti on visual design, and that the aim was to reproduce the look and playability of arcade classics like Streets of Rage and Final Fight, adapted to the world of the video.
In 2025 the band tied its two worlds into one commission. On 28 April the official site announced a collaboration with Diablo IV and Berserk, out of which came a new song, "Enter The Behelit". Kabanen thanked the teams at Blizzard, Berserk and Nuclear Blast, and closed by naming Kentaro Miura.
The first North American tour was thirty-one shows in two halves. The post of 22 May 2022, the day after it ended, counts twenty headline dates — some of them sold out — and eleven more with Nightwish. The band called it a start they could not have wished better of.
The 2023 European tour ran to forty-four shows in twenty-one countries. The post of 24 March that year gives those figures for the Dark Connection European Tour, says many of them sold out and that it brought a lot of firsts, and thanks Firewind, who were with them throughout, plus Suicidal Angels who joined for two nights. The year-end summary put the number of sell-outs at twenty-five.
That tour told the band where it stood. The 2024 year-end note says they had decided at the start of the year to squeeze more out of Dark Connection rather than take a break to write, joined forces with Gloryhammer and went out to venues holding two to four thousand people — and sold them out. They had not known what to expect, they wrote, and the success dispelled every one of their preliminary worries: they now knew they had built a large and loyal following they could count on at any time.
A founding guitarist left after exactly ten years. The announcement of 22 October 2025 said, with heavy hearts, that Kasperi Heikkinen was parting ways with Beast In Black after a decade together, and that since they were in the middle of a large tour with Helloween they would carry on as a four-piece for a few shows until the right guitarist was found. The band added plainly that it would not be commenting further while the tour was running.
The stand-in learned the whole set in four days. A post of 28 October 2025 announced that Daniel Freyberg of Crownshift, formerly of Children Of Bodom, would be joining them on guitar for the Helloween tour — and that he had learned their entire set in just four days. Their first show together was that night in Katowice.
The permanent guitarist came out of interviews with candidates from Finland and abroad. The announcement of 17 June 2026 welcomed Markus Venehsalo officially, saying he had shown his claws with strong musicianship and original solos during extensive interviews with several highly skilled players from inside and outside Finland — and that his Eastern Finnish sense of humour struck a chord with the band, which made the decision feel both natural and inevitable.
The official site marks the band's growth with two numbers. Its band page says the first headline tour drew over a thousand people a night, and that by the time they were headlining across Europe, North and South America and Japan after Dark Connection they were averaging 2,500 a show, with main-stage appearances at Wacken Open Air, Hellfest and Graspop.
The band exists because its founder had to give up a name. Speaking to Louder (Metal Hammer), Kabanen described how the arguments inside Battle Beast — a band he had started, named and written every song for — moved from musical direction to the question of who owned the name, and how in the end he had to accept that the others would keep it. Beast In Black was the vehicle for carrying on the vision that had just been cut off.
The name is two phrases from one manga, welded together. Kabanen told the Japanese site BARKS that he took the Black Swordsman — the figure at the centre of Berserk — and the Beast of Darkness that the character carries inside him, and fused the two into Beast In Black.
Berserk reached him on a borrowed DVD. Kabanen told BARKS that a friend introduced him to it as a boy, he thinks in 2006; one episode was enough, he watched all twenty-five in a sitting, and because the last of them ended on a cliffhanger he could not wait and went straight to the manga to find out what happened next. He has been a fan ever since.
The masters for the second album were finished a few days before the band left on tour. Kabanen told BARKS that the previous summer had been a festival season with a show every weekend, so the album had to be made on the weekdays in between; he was producing it himself, which kept him in the studio the whole time; and the mastering was only completed a matter of days before the Nightwish support tour began in early November. He described the schedule as brutally tight, and as hell.
Kabanen explained the album's title in terms he thought anyone could apply to themselves. He told BARKS that when something or someone matters enough — when you feel real passion for it — you are willing to pay the price, and that From Hell With Love means being willing to go through hell for your dreams. He was careful to add that he did not want to tie the title to one reading, and that he likes titles listeners can find their own meaning in.
On the second album Kabanen wrote lyrics with someone else for the first time. He told BARKS that he had co-written with an Italian friend living in Helsinki who shares his love of Berserk and other manga and anime, and that working with someone who takes the same subject seriously had been a good experience. The official discography credits that collaborator as "P. Ribaldini".
Kabanen broke the second album's subject matter down by the numbers. He told BARKS that his lyrics fall into two kinds — manga, and personal experience — and that on this record five songs were about Berserk and one about Fist Of The North Star, with the remaining half given over to personal feelings and declarations. The Fist Of The North Star song is the opener, "Cry Out For A Hero".
The album's other cover came off a film soundtrack. Kabanen told BARKS that the idea of doing Robert Tepper's "No Easy Way Out", known from Rocky IV, had been around for a couple of years. Everyone in the band liked the song — Kasperi in particular is a big fan of that soundtrack — and it was chosen because it was a favourite of all of them.
The direction of the third album was settled while the second was still being finished. Kabanen told Blabbermouth that he was already thinking about album three at the end of 2018, as they were wrapping up album two, and that the moment it was done he knew the next one would be cyberpunk-influenced. The same thing happened again, he said: before the third was finished he already knew things about the fourth.
The third album exists in the shape it does because touring stopped. Kabanen told Blabbermouth that the band had been due to tour the United States with HammerFall in the autumn of 2020 and that the album was supposed to be ready by then — something he had been sure he could not manage — so the extra time came as a relief. Without it, he reckons, Dark Connection might not have appeared until 2022 or 2023. He also admits the reverse: with that much time he took on work not directly related to the record and lost weeks, perhaps months, to it.
The third album's sleeve has a named character on it. In remarks carried by Blabbermouth, Kabanen says the artwork is again by Roman Ismailov and that what it shows is the Beast and a femme fatale gynoid called Cynthia. The tense gaze between them, he says, speaks of a connection that is exciting and dangerous on a physical, emotional and even moral level.
The "Hardcore" video has a stated visual source. In the comment Blabbermouth carried, Kabanen describes it as the result of an unapologetic and unforgiving vision inspired by the work of Hajime Sorayama and by raw nineties cyberpunk anime — naming, specifically, AD Police Files: The Phantom Woman.
One music video took a year and a half. Kabanen told Blabbermouth that work on the clip for the lead single "Moonlight Rendezvous" began in the spring of 2020 and took almost eighteen months to finish — partly for want of money, partly because he was simultaneously making the album, writing the lyrics and producing it. For the director, Katri Ilona Koppanen, it was a directorial debut.
The band coined a joke genre for itself. Releasing "Power Of The Beast" in June 2024, Kabanen wrote that with musical influences so heavily permeated by Super Eurobeat, absorbed over many years, it was fair enough — with tongue in cheek — to describe the song as Super Eurobeast. It was the first of its kind, he added, and would definitely not be the last.
Kabanen is on the record about his relationship with deadlines. Asked in August 2024 how the fourth album was coming, he said three years of touring had left him without a peaceful enough environment to set its themes in stone, and that although there was plenty of new music and lyrics he had not been able to crystallise the vision. Anyone who knows him, he added — the label, his bandmates, the management — knows that Anton plus a deadline is the worst combination there is.
To finish the album, the band's founder stayed off a tour. On 7 April 2026 Kabanen announced on social media that he would not be joining his bandmates for the North American run with Helloween, because staying behind was vital for the new album. He wrote that making it had been beset by constant distractions and problems that had choked the workflow beyond what was acceptable, especially over the past couple of years, but that the record had reached a pivotal checkpoint and now needed his full attention. The band went without him; the tour opened in Dallas that same day and closed on 2 May in Las Vegas.
The band reported the 2023 Tokyo attendance without rounding up. Its year-end summary says they played two nights in a row in Tokyo, that one sold out and that the other came close.
The 2024 visit was another pair of consecutive nights. A post of 3 November 2023 announced a return to Japan on 22 and 23 May 2024 at Zepp Shinjuku in Tokyo under the title "Two Nights for Love", with Turmion Kätilöt joining as special guest — the same band that had supported their first European headline tour in 2019.
The Japanese pressings all carry the same two extras. Ward Records' page for Dark Connection (catalogue number GQCS-91103, released 29 October 2021) states that the Japanese edition includes Japanese liner notes and translated lyrics — the same note appears on the Japanese editions of Berserker and Power Of The Beast.
The Japanese edition of the debut came with a mail-order-only bundle. Ward Records' page for Berserker gives the release date as 3 November 2017 and records a limited run of fifty sets, sold only through the label's own store, pairing a CD carrying a hand-signed card with a T-shirt (catalogue number WRDZZ-664, 5,500 yen before tax). Like the other Japanese pressings it carried Japanese liner notes and translated lyrics.
The band's Japanese label introduces them as a band shaped by Japanese manga and film. Ward Records' product copy notes that Kabanen left Battle Beast in 2015 to form Beast In Black, that songs drawing heavily on Japanese comics and movies got them talked about, and that in 2023 and 2024 they played full houses in Tokyo two years running.
The second album came out in Japan on the same day as everywhere else. The release details printed with the BARKS interview give From Hell With Love a simultaneous worldwide release on 8 February 2019, with the Japanese edition (GQCS-90684) carrying Japanese liner notes and translated lyrics. Two limited runs went alongside it: fifty CDs with a hand-signed card, and thirty sets pairing a signed card with a T-shirt.
Kabanen rates his singer on stamina in the studio as much as range. On Nuclear Blast's Dark Connection page he calls Papadopoulos one of those rare singers who can do anything, and a dedicated one — not a man who settles for one or two takes, but one who keeps going until the result is right. Kabanen adds that his own raspy screams, some duets and plenty of backing vocals are on the record too, but that this is the most varied performance his singer has given.
The official post announcing the last stage of the debut ran to one line. On 15 June 2017 the band's site said the album had received its final touches from Mika Jussila at Finnvox Studios — the long-established Helsinki room whose mastering engineer's name appears on a great many Nordic metal records.
The debut's mix credits bring in an engineer well known from another Finnish band's records. The official discography lists Kabanen as producer, the mix as a joint job by Tero "Teecee" Kinnunen and Kabanen with additional mixing assistance from Emil "Emppu" Pohjalainen, the recording at Sound Quest Studio and the mastering by Mika Jussila at Finnvox.
Two of the debut's songs were only on one edition. The official discography marks "Hell For All Eternity" and "Go To Hell" among the twelve titles as digipak bonus songs — which leaves ten on the standard disc.
The label announcement laid the sequence out plainly. The August 2017 release says the band was founded in 2015 right after Kabanen parted ways with Battle Beast, that it played its first gig opening for Nightwish before that year was out, that Berserker was already in progress by then and was completed in the summer of 2017, and that the deal followed almost immediately. Stage first, album second, contract last.
The sleeve came with a commentary from the man who painted it. On 4 October 2017 the band's site published a video in which Roman Ismailov, the graphic artist behind the debut, went through details and secrets of the Berserker cover artwork.
Just before the debut, the band explained itself on camera. A post on 27 September 2017 announced a video in which Kabanen and Kasperi Heikkinen talk through how Beast In Black came together, where the inspiration for the name came from, and what the band had been up to lately.
The title of "Zodd The Immortal" gives its origin away. On the Nuclear Blast page Kabanen describes it as the most aggressive song on the album, especially vocally, and adds that it too is Berserk-related and that he hopes fans of the manga will take to it.
By its author's own account one track on the debut is too strange for a metal album. On the Nuclear Blast page Kabanen laughs off the disco- and dance-influenced "Crazy, Mad, Insane" as the craziest and maybe the weirdest song to be found on a heavy metal record, and recommends it to anyone with a taste for Italo disco and eighties synth pop.
Nuclear Blast's page names the records under the debut's sound: eighties metal bands — Judas Priest, Manowar, W.A.S.P., Black Sabbath and Accept. Kabanen's own description of the album is that it is very straightforward, catchy and powerful, with symphonic elements mixed in here and there.
The second show was in the same building. A post of 20 November 2015 announced that the band would be back at the Metro Areena in Espoo on 19 December, this time supporting Sabaton, Stratovarius and Gamma Ray. Their debut album was still nearly two years away.
In all of 2016 the band played once. The post of 16 April that year announced an invitation to Tuska, the biggest metal event in Finland, and said plainly that it was the only Beast In Black show scheduled for the year — so anyone who wanted to see them on stage in 2016 had better be there.
The tour that carried the debut out into the world put Kabanen in front of one of his own idols. On 20 September 2017 the band called the final confirmation of a support slot on W.A.S.P.'s Re-Idolized anniversary tour a big dream come true. The run opened in Antwerp, Paris and Strasbourg and worked its way through Spain — and W.A.S.P. is one of the bands Kabanen has repeatedly named as a starting point for his own music.
Within a month of the debut coming out the next tour was booked. A post of 14 November 2017 announced nine shows in Germany that December supporting Beyond The Black and Kobra And The Lotus, running from Cologne to Hamburg — barely a month after the album's release.
A band three years old joined a farewell tour by the pioneers of its genre. On 5 December 2017 the official site called the chance to take part in Rhapsody's 20th Anniversary Farewell tour an honour beyond words, describing them as the pioneers of symphonic power metal who influenced a whole generation. The run began in Italy in February 2018 and went on through Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Britain.
The band called the sell-outs unexpected, in writing. The post of 11 February 2018 describes both first headline concerts selling out as unbelievable and unexpected — and the year-end summary went as far as printing the capacities: 530 in Jyväskylä, 900 in Helsinki.
The touring cycle for the debut ended where it had begun. Nuclear Blast's page for From Hell With Love says that to close the Berserker live chapter properly the band went back to supporting Nightwish, in front of several thousand people, in November and December 2018 — the same act they had opened for when their live career started in 2015.
The label's biography keeps a record of which musicians praised the debut. Nuclear Blast's From Hell With Love page names Nightwish's Tuomas Holopainen and Helloween/Gamma Ray's Kai Hansen among the well-known players who spoke up for Berserker, and quotes Holopainen to the effect that you would have to be out of your mind not to love the album.
Both the mix and the master changed hands for the second album. The official discography credits From Hell With Love to Kabanen alone as producer and mixer, with mastering by Emil Pohjalainen at Amethyst Sound Productions. Neither Tero Kinnunen, who co-mixed the debut, nor Mika Jussila, who mastered it, appears on these credits.
The same hand drew the second sleeve. On 31 October 2018 the band revealed the artwork for album two and credited it to Roman Ismailov — the artist who had been illustrating Kabanen's records since the Battle Beast days.
That song kept going. The band's own biography page states that the breakout video for "Blind And Frozen" has passed fifty million views on YouTube.
The first European headline tour was announced before the album it was built around. On 19 September 2018 the band presented it as the live presentation of the second record, From Hell With Love, with Finland's Turmion Kätilöt as special guest. It opened in Helsinki in February 2019 and went on to Hamburg, Bochum and Amsterdam.
The band called its own first headline tour a risk, in public. The 2018 year-end note says headlining tours are always a big gamble and the very first one especially so; the pre-sales were surprisingly strong and some venues had already sold out, but now they would have to hold an audience for longer than ever before and send it home still hungry. That, they wrote, was the real challenge.
The gamble had paid off by opening night. The post on 20 February 2019, the day the tour started, reports that many of the shows were already sold out — a considerable success, it says, for the band's first ever headline tour.
Their first Russian shows were two headline dates. A post of 30 May 2019 announced them for that September — Red in Moscow and Zal in St Petersburg. A later announcement set out a return in May 2020 on a short run with Nightwish that would also bring first-ever shows in Kyiv and Minsk.
When they reached Wacken the band measured it against how young they were. The post of 7 August 2019 notes that most bands dream of playing Wacken at the start of their career and only a few ever get there, and says the honour felt greater still given how short a time Beast In Black had existed.
The day after the third album came out, the first two moved up a level. On 30 October 2021 the band announced that Finnish sales had taken Berserker to platinum and From Hell With Love to gold. Dark Connection had been released the day before.
The certifications kept climbing, one step at a time. On 14 August 2024 the band announced that From Hell With Love had gone platinum and Dark Connection gold. Máté Molnár's comment was that you do not think about how a record will be received while you are making it, and that it is only when the gold and platinum awards arrive that you realise you have made many thousands of people happy.
The first nomination was for the debut. On 4 September 2018 the band announced it was up for Best Debut Album at that year's Metal Hammer Awards, with the ceremony held in Berlin on 14 September.
The second album reached Finland's own music awards. A post of 18 December 2019 announced that From Hell With Love had been nominated in the Best Metal Album category at the EMMA Gaala. The same year the band was also nominated for the Music Moves Europe Talent Awards.
A voted award followed in 2024. On 5 January 2025 the band announced that it had won New Generation Metal Band of the Year at the Metal Awards, quoting a share of 34.52% of the votes.
On the first anniversary the band released a video chosen to match it. On 6 May 2022, exactly a year after Miura's death, the official site published Kabanen's reflections and with them the music video for "Broken Survivors". He wrote that the band had set out to make something that would hold the warmer, gentler side of Miura's vulnerable characters.
Kabanen separated out which songs on album three came from where. According to the Nuclear Blast page, "Highway To Mars" and "Moonlight Rendezvous" lead into the cyberpunk world of the Armitage III anime and are partly Blade Runner-inspired, while "Dark New World", "To The Last Drop Of Blood" and "Broken Survivors" are the record's tribute to Berserk.
That video paid for its own imagery. The band's 2021 year-end summary lists "Hardcore" as the third video from the album and notes, plainly, that its explicit content meant it could not reach fans in great numbers on YouTube under the platform's new regulations.
The third album was very nearly a one-man job. The official discography credits Dark Connection to Kabanen as producer, and as the man who recorded and mixed it at Sound Quest Studio. Only the mastering, by Emil Pohjalainen, was somebody else's.
The third album's bonus tracks were covers of two acts that rarely appear on one record. The official track listing published on 29 October 2021 gives tracks twelve and thirteen as Manowar's "Battle Hymn" and Michael Jackson's "They Don't Care About Us" — and Manowar is one of the bands Kabanen has named as a starting point for his own music.
The second album charted high in Germany too. Nuclear Blast's Dark Connection page, describing the success of the first two records, notes that From Hell With Love reached the top ten of the German album chart.
Those eighteen months paid off inside a fortnight. The band's 2021 year-end summary records that "Moonlight Rendezvous", the first video from Dark Connection, took its first million YouTube views in under two weeks.
That video also won a prize as a film. On 2 December 2021 the band announced that "Moonlight Rendezvous" had won the Best Music Video of the Month competition at the Top Shorts festival.
The "Hardcore" video was selected by a festival too. A post of 3 June 2022 announced that it had been chosen for the Silver Screenings selection at the Berlin Music Video Awards and would be screened there on 9 June. The band described the BMVA as one of the best-known music video festivals there is.
"One Night In Tokyo" was the band's first pixel-animated video. The 2021 year-end summary lists it as the second clip from Dark Connection and as their first in that style — and it was this video that later grew into an arcade game.
A video maker known for games sat down with the band. A post of 20 January 2023 says James Rolfe, of Cinemassacre and The Angry Video Game Nerd, joined them virtually for a roundtable covering their favourite metal bands, the "One Night In Tokyo" web game and nearly every aspect of how Beast In Black works.
In 2023 the band put all three albums on YouTube in full. The announcement of 25 April says Berserker, From Hell With Love and Dark Connection all went officially live there as complete albums.
The game kept being rebuilt. The official site records an upgraded version in 2023, a new mini game in July 2024, and on 21 December 2024 a revised edition with new enemies to fight. That revision credits game design, development and visual design to Marvin Advergames.
The blurb on the band's game page is a rewrite of one of its own song titles. It opens by asking what could be better than spending one night in Tokyo — answering "nothing" — and describes fighting a way through the futuristic dreamscapes of the city. The song is "One Night In Tokyo".
Before the arcade game there was a quiz. On 27 September 2021 the band published a quiz game testing knowledge of Beast In Black and the Berserk manga, offered as a way to learn how the two connect to each other.
The song is about one very specific figure in Berserk. In the note on the band's site, Kabanen says its core is the character referred to as Nobody, or the Egg of the Perfect World — his immeasurable suffering, his surroundings and his downfall. Many of the lines also connect to the character called the Demon Child and to his own life, but in simple terms, he writes, it is a subconscious dialogue between Nobody and his behelit, each mirroring the other.
On "Enter The Behelit" the singer worked on the mix. The official discography credits production and mixing to Kabanen with additional mixing assistance from Yannis Papadopoulos, the recording to Sound Quest Studio and the mastering to Miro Kiiski at Miro Mastering. The cover artwork is credited to Blizzard Entertainment rather than to Roman Ismailov.
The bass player's signature models have names. In the announcement of 12 November 2018 Máté Molnár said that after some years of working with the Slovak company GV Guitars they had decided to build custom models for him, and introduced "Two Devils", a white instrument following the black "Serpent".
The third bass was odd even to look at. A post of 1 July 2021 describes Máté Molnár's third signature model, "the Devil", as having the weirdest shape so far — a devil stirring a yellow soup in a black cauldron — again built by GV Guitars.
The fourth bass was the band's emblem in wood. A post of 29 June 2024 says Máté Molnár's fourth signature model, "the Beast", made its debut in the "Power Of The Beast" video and represents the band's own symbol. Its maker describes the body as inspired by the band's logo, with the beast shape sculpted into it in three dimensions.
The drummer's endorsement came with a self-deprecating line. On 29 February 2020 the band announced that Atte Palokangas had become an official Tama artist. His comment was that he had never owned a Tama kit, and had therefore always been more or less secretly in love with the brand. He had signed with Centent cymbals in 2018 and announced a partnership with Sihi cymbals in 2019.
The band explained in its own words why the fourth album slipped to 2026. The 2025 year-end summary says the year had been given over to writing and recording new songs, with the release originally planned for the end of 2025 — and that an unexpected collaboration with Blizzard, one of the biggest gaming companies in the world, caused a significant delay and forced the release into the following year.
The first American concert was announced exactly a year ahead. On 12 September 2019 the band named ProgPower USA in Atlanta on 12 September 2020 as its first US show, and told fans to meet them in precisely one year. The band's actual touring in the United States came later still.
The second North American tour was thirty-one headline shows. The 2023 year-end summary gives it the title "Back in North America", names Dance With The Dead as special guests and reports nine sell-outs out of thirty-one. The same year brought seventeen summer festival appearances — Summer Breeze Brazil, ProgPower USA, Hellfest and Graspop among them — all on main stages.
The 2024 European tour had two headliners on it. The post of 7 February 2024 reports that the Glory and the Beast tour, co-headlined with Gloryhammer and supported by Brothers Of Metal, covered twenty-one dates in fourteen countries with twelve of them sold out.
They reached South America alongside the band they had opened for at their very first show. A post of 25 January 2022 announced a support run with Nightwish that October through Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Buenos Aires and Santiago. Headline dates were added later, and the band described those as its first ever headline shows on the continent.
In its tenth year the band supported Helloween's fortieth anniversary tour. The 2025 year-end summary puts the two facts side by side — the "40 Years" European run, and the band's own ten years of existence — and describes it as the tour on which they introduced themselves to a great many new listeners.
A booking on a ship came in 2025 too. The year-end summary lists the band's first appearance at 70000tons of Metal, which it calls the world's biggest heavy metal cruise, among the year's announcements. The dates are 29 January to 2 February 2026.
The tour built around the fourth album was named twice. On 13 October 2025 the band announced a European headline run for the end of 2026 as the live presentation of album four, with Sonata Arctica as special guests and Frozen Crown in support. On 22 June 2026 it gave the same run a new name and a new design: the Resurrection Tour.
The stand-in's stint had a stated expiry date from the start. In the announcement of 17 June 2026, Daniel Freyberg wrote that the eight months he had spent stepping outside his normal world to share a stage with them were something everyone had known would be a temporary chapter, because of his long-term plans with Crownshift — and that although their paths were now heading in different directions, the friendship remained.
The new guitarist marked his arrival with a story from when he was eight. In the announcement of 17 June 2026, Markus Venehsalo recalled his father bringing home a guitar bought from a colleague at work: he plugged it into an amp, found the distortion channel and told his father he was going to be a rock 'n' roll guitarist. Being in the Beast In Black line-up now, he wrote, feels like an almost impossible dream come true.
The band left one plain line about losing a member. Its 2025 year-end summary lists parting with Kasperi Heikkinen among the year's losses and says that line-up changes always hurt, especially when a founding member leaves the family — before adding that all things happen for good and the machine carries on, and closing with a note of thanks to Daniel Freyberg for stepping in at a moment's notice.
The line-up the official site currently lists runs to five names. At the foot of the band page stand Atte Palokangas on drums, Markus Venehsalo on guitars, Yannis Papadopoulos on vocals, Anton Kabanen on guitars and Máté Molnár on bass. Three of them — Kabanen, Papadopoulos and Molnár — have been there since the founding.
On the tenth anniversary the band got a present from a video director. On 8 October 2025 the official site announced that Katri Koppanen, who had directed several of their videos, had prepared a surprise for the day, and printed her note: sleepless nights in a tour-bus bunk, after-show showers, unholy quantities of clothes that should be burned after every tour — and the observation that however blinding the lights, none of them shine brighter than the fire inside the band.
The band sums up its own sound in one sentence on its website. The band page describes Beast In Black as a Helsinki-based international heavy metal band whose sound fuses powerful riffs with melodic hooks, dance-metal energy and the drama of 1980s pop and electronic music, with lyrics drawn from dark fantasy and science fiction and a particular passion for the manga Berserk.
The official site states the year for album four. The band page closes by saying the long-awaited fourth Beast In Black album is scheduled for release in 2026 — which puts nearly five years between it and Dark Connection, released in October 2021.
In a year without tours the band signed a merchandise partner. A post of 6 November 2020 announced a cooperation with Bravado, one of the biggest merchandising companies in the world, and pointed fans to a new store for merch and music. A dedicated North American artist shop followed in 2022.
Both albums were issued on cassette. The official site records the tape edition of From Hell With Love arriving on 16 June 2020 and that of Berserker on 4 December the same year — both in the year touring stopped.
In 2019 the band put out a warning about ticket fraud. The post of 23 July says more and more people are being scammed online every day and urges fans to buy tickets only through the sites the band itself points to, listing where to find them: the Tour section of the official site and the band's Facebook events.
Father Christmas once turned up at one of their shows. On Christmas Eve 2021 the band published footage of an occasion a couple of years earlier when, as they put it, Santa himself and his Elf Girls had visited a Beast In Black concert to spread some seasonal magic — adding that there was no better day than this one to share a memory that crazy, or mad, or insane.
The public reason for the departure was a single phrase. Blabbermouth reports that Kabanen left Battle Beast in February 2015, and that what was said at the time was "insurmountable disagreements" with the other members. No official breakdown of that phrase followed.
What Kabanen wanted was never complicated. He told Louder that his original vision had been to build a heavy metal band in the mould of his own idols — Judas Priest, Manowar, W.A.S.P. and Accept — and that Beast In Black was the band that took him back to it.
Keeping the word "beast" was partly a matter of pride. Kabanen gave BARKS two reasons for the name: he wanted to hold on to "beast" as part of the band's identity after leaving Battle Beast, and he takes pride in having been the one who came up with the word in the first place. The second reason was that he wanted the name itself to declare how deeply he loves Berserk.
Kabanen has compared "the beast" to another band's mascot. In remarks quoted by Blabbermouth he said he kept the word because he wanted to continue the vision he had begun in Battle Beast, and because the beast had already become an essential part of his life — something, in his words, like Iron Maiden's Eddie.
Where his previous band's name came from stayed unsaid until 2022. In a Blabbermouth interview Kabanen prefaced the answer by saying he thought nobody knew and that he had never mentioned it in an interview before: the name Battle Beast arrived like a thunderbolt while he was watching He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe, out of two characters called Beast Man and Battle Cat.
What draws Kabanen to Berserk is not the swords. He told BARKS that if you strip away the demons and the magic, what is left at the centre is intensely human: what a person is, what a life means, why the world holds so much pain, who to love and who to hate, whether to spend a life on revenge or on a dream. Those are questions real people face, which is why he can identify with the characters, and why they drive his songwriting.
The other Japanese manga in the band's songs came out of a bargain bin. Kabanen told BARKS that about a year after moving to Helsinki he came across a shop selling second-hand books and videos out on the street, found VHS tapes going for something like fifty cents each, and bought the lot. The pile turned out to be a jumble of anime and films, and several of the tapes were Fist Of The North Star — a series he did not know at the time and was floored by. He puts it at around 2008.
The five came from five different bands and more than one country. The line-up Blabbermouth printed in 2017 credits Yannis Papadopoulos to the Greek band Wardrum, Kasperi Heikkinen to U.D.O., Máté Molnár to the Hungarian band Wisdom and Sami Hänninen to Finland's Brymir. That is why a Helsinki-based band gets described as an international one.
The debut was finished before there was a label to put it out. In July 2017 Blabbermouth reported that the album was complete and that the band was still working on securing a record deal for it. Most of it had been recorded at Kabanen's own Sound Quest Studio, and he had produced it himself.
That recording had taken over a year. Blabbermouth reported that the making of Berserker ran more than twelve months and was finished in the summer of 2017 — and that the Nuclear Blast deal was inked almost immediately after the band put the finishing touches to it.
One of the debut's bonus tracks was played live long before it was recorded. The Blabbermouth item from July 2017 came with footage of the band performing a new song called "Go To Hell" at the previous year's Tuska festival in Helsinki. It did not appear on a record until the digipak edition of Berserker, more than a year later.
The beast itself was drawn by two people. The Louder feature records that Kabanen not only founded Battle Beast, named it and wrote all its songs, but co-created its mascot — the Beast — with the artist Roman Ismailov. In the same piece Kabanen notes that Ismailov made that band's first album cover and says the band intends to keep the Beast character on its sleeves in future.
The new drummer took a second to decide. Kabanen told BARKS that he had been sure Palokangas was the man even before he joined, and that when he was finally asked to come in officially he said yes in about one second. Kabanen's assessment is that he is an entertainer as well as a drummer — someone who knows how to make a show out of it rather than just play.
Kabanen conceded that the title also describes how the record itself was made. Speaking to BARKS he said the album had come through a hellish set of circumstances and been finished with love and dedication, so the title fits it in that sense too — though he offered that only as one example of what it could mean.
A Fist Of The North Star song was not new for him — releasing one was. Kabanen told BARKS that he had written songs about the series before but that this was the first time one had made it onto an album. He called it a very powerful piece of animation.
The Motörhead cover on the second album was the bass player's idea. Kabanen told BARKS that "Killed By Death" came from the bassist, and that he had known the song since he was eight so playing it was easy. He also noted the oddity of a power-metal-leaning singer taking on a Lemmy vocal, and reckoned Papadopoulos had handled it very well.
"Power Of The Beast" mixes Berserk with its author's own life, as usual. In the comment Blabbermouth carried, Kabanen dedicates the song to anyone in need of encouragement, motivation and inner strength, and likens its message to the unyielding resolve of Guts, the protagonist of Berserk. The lyrics, he says, are a hybrid of the manga and his own outlook and experience.
The video's director said she built it out of films from the eighties and nineties. In the comment Blabbermouth published, Katri Koppanen explains that she started on the script when only fragments of the lyrics existed, and could already tell the song's message would be empowering. Given how dark and chaotic the world has become, she wrote, she often finds herself missing the innocence of films where the bad guys always got what they deserved — and wanted to make something that leaves you in a good mood at the end.
Kabanen has decided not to write on the road. He told Blabbermouth that he composes in his head while travelling — melodies, riffs, a sentence that might turn into a chorus — but that the once or twice he took a computer on tour to write or record, it simply did not work for him. He gets to write at home, he reasons, and cannot have on tour what only being on tour gives him; better to keep a clear difference between the two.
Kabanen is unbothered by how close his band gets to pop. He told Blabbermouth that he has always considered heavy metal the richest and most liberating genre in the whole existence of music: everything from the softest whisper and the slowest melody to fast, aggressive, high-screaming and even growled vocals is acceptable within it, and he challenges anyone to find another genre with that range. That, he says, is why he does not mind if the band drifts towards pop, Eurobeat or symphonic music.
Kabanen argues that a short, catchy song is hard to write. He told Blabbermouth that writing a simple song is easy, but writing one that is simple and catchy without being irritating is not. Anyone can repeat two bars of a plain melody and call it a song; the questions are whether it resonates with the listener, whether it carries emotion, whether the words mean anything, whether the chorus lifts — or whether it just sticks in the head and grates. Simplicity, in his phrase, is a double-edged sword.