BEAST IN BLACK have released "Lost Children", a sweeping power ballad and the second song unveiled from their upcoming fourth album, Fear The Beast. It comes with a video once again directed by Katri Ilona Koppanen, and lands just before the band's "Resurrection" headline tour opens in London on October 26.
The Helsinki band's fascination with Kentaro Miura's "Berserk" goes back to the debut album, and "Lost Children" digs into the manga's Lost Children Chapter, which guitarist and songwriter Anton Kabanen calls one of his absolute favorite parts of the saga, "if not my favorite." He says it made a huge impression when he first read it some 20 years ago and he had wanted to write about it ever since.
At the center of the song is Rosine, the child who becomes the arc's antagonist. Kabanen describes her as a vulnerable child pushed into a tragic situation rather than someone inherently evil: "You can understand why Rosine makes the choices she does without necessarily being able to forgive what she does... It's not a straightforward story of good versus evil. The emotions are contradictory, and that's precisely why it's so deeply moving."
The ballad puts frontman Yannis Papadopoulos front and center, and Kabanen calls Koppanen's clip "the most soulful BEAST IN BLACK music video to date."
"Lost Children" follows last month's title track "Fear The Beast", Kabanen's tribute to H.R. Giger and "Alien". The album was written and produced by Kabanen, with artwork by Roman Ismailov, and is the first to feature new lead guitarist Markus Venehsalo. Kabanen sat out BEAST IN BLACK's North American run supporting HELLOWEEN earlier this year to finish it.
BEAST IN BLACK are Yannis Papadopoulos (lead vocals), Anton Kabanen (guitars, vocals, programming), Markus Venehsalo (guitars), Mate Molnar (bass) and Atte Palokangas (drums).