Temple Balls’ “Temple Balls”

Review By Josh Jones

After releasing four previous albums, the Finnish band Temple Balls say that they feel they have found a “preferred sound” which carries their “divisive band’s name”, of which I strongly agree! This album is bold, especially bold as it harnesses a nostalgic 80s sound whilst also being able to add further melody and therefore creating melodic hard rock, and so stands out among others due to it bringing back the 80s feel into modern rock.

I grew up listening to my dad’s cheesy 80s rock, glam rock and hard rock, and so this album hit hard deep within me (I have listened to it back-to-back three times over!). It also panders to newer metal conventions, mildly crossing the line into power metal with their riffs and licks that go across the fretboard, combining them with strong, simple hard rock power chords, giving the listener a wall of sound that can’t be beat due to the effective mixing of power metal-style guitar and hard rockish, simple, thumpy drums which carry the song. If the drums were any different, I feel they would stray too far from their target genre, showing how effectively the drummer (Antti Hissa) has done his job!

The vocalist Arde Teronen effectively captures a great 80s hard rock feel with his impressive vocals, using classic rock vocal tones that you could argue draw inspiration from Skid Row’s Sebastian Bach, emphasising why the album feels like it does. I believe that again, if the vocals were any different, it would greatly affect the entire feel of the album and reject the 80s sound they look for, showing how a great deal of thought has been put into this album’s sound.

The lyrics of the songs are quite interesting; they follow a standard rock structure in terms of design, including repetitive choruses and low-key verses that almost react with the beat of the song, matching the rhythm of the drums and guitar to build up tension for the chorus. Overall, it is nice and clean, but sometimes a repetitive chorus gets a bit too repetitive; however, I cannot downmark the album for trying to emulate a specific style that calls for such a design.

Temple Balls as a band have gone quite far, building a large fan base and supporting extremely large bands in concerts such as Queen and Deep Purple, further emphasising their popularity, whilst also showing their great ability to entertain the crowd even when overshadowed by much larger bands. They have played globally, from the UK to Japan, so they must be quite popular!

I see great potential in this band, and they deserve all the good that has happened to them so far, and I hope they will be able to break through into the Americas so that they can truly be a global band!

“Temple Balls”:

1.    Flashback Dynamite    
2.    Lethal Force    
3.    Tokyo Love    
4.    There Will Be Blood    
5.    We Are The Night    
6.    Hellbound    
7.    Soul Survivor    
8.    The Path Within    
9.    Stronger Than Fire    
10.    Chasing The Madness    
11.    Living In A Nightmare