Battle Born
Details
LP / Format
Island Records / Label
Alternative Rock / Genres
thekillersmusic.com / Website
Tags
Sign In to rate and review
CRITIC REVIEWS
75
Instead of being blandly polished, The Killers come off sounding like an excited young band with something to prove.
70
If you’ve the stomach to set aside your indie sensibilities and endure the occasional terrifying flashback to ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It For You’, ‘Battle Born’ holds some majestic moments.
70
Battle Born forges deeper into their distinctive traits and away from the compromises with radio or current trends
67
If you already don’t buy into The Killers, you’ll probably find Battle Born even more bloated, ridiculous, and over-the-top than anything else they’ve ever done.
50
Battle Born is music played in the past tense. Perfect, imperfect, pluperfect. Mostly imperfect.
40
After making it big off the back of a Murder Trilogy, The Killers seem at a loss as to where they’re heading next.
40
The tragedy of Battle Born is that even when it shouts at the top of its lungs, it never reaches that special place that the band accidentally trips into with their best material.
30
When you add it all up, Battle Born is a confused mess of an album, drenched in influences but positively overextended in its execution, the band trying way too hard to do something grander and more complex than what they’ve done before.
Ughhhhhh...
First of all, they try to go.. dance.. pop.. rock?? on Day & Age, well that didn't really work out. So on this album...
They try to go full-on Springsteen-style heartland rock, but the execution on most tracks from both albums leave a lot to be desired, unfortunately...
Also, they went heartland rock/alternative rock before on Sam's Town, and that worked out great! what happened here??
"Battle Born" features two of the best Killers songs, "Miss Atomic Bomb" & " Runaways". Unfortunately, the rest of the album repeats the same formula throughout its 51-minute runtime and it relies too much on 80's Heartland nostalgia. Even The Killers don't like this album... yeesh.
Fav Tracks: Miss Atomic Bomb, Runaways, Here With Me, The Way It Was, Battle Born
Least Fav Tracks: Be Still, Heart Of A Girl
Score:
5.8
Okay
This has to be the lowest point in The Killers discography for me. This album feels like it goes on for so long as the track list is just filled with boring and mediocre tracks. The production and instrumentation is totally generic and the only thing stopping this from being really bad is Flower's energy. The only tracks I enjoyed were Be Still and Battle Born.
Going into The Killers' fourth studio album, *Battle Born*, I wasn't really sure where to set my expectations. While the band had made a bevy of strong tracks in their first two albums, 2008's *Day & Age* didn't feel as creatively driven. It felt like a lot like *Sam's Town* but with more synthwork incorporated. Now, four years later, I was just kinda hoping that I'd see something a little more unique or something, especially considering how long the break was between these two albums. ... read more
Well. They tried to go new wave/dance, and it just didn’t work out as intended. While some of the songs are completely fine, the other ones were just repeating itself while being the worst songs that Brandon & co. ever put out. This killed their career for me, and that definitely was their lowest point. But tbh Wonderful Wonderful was awful as well.
i truly think this album will be reevaluated one day as a misunderstood classic. Or at least a top tier running album.
Contributions By
thisisabtlgrnd, royalflush, patton, philthy, Alejandro González, Leo Aguilar, erik, domvic, MarkyCBecome a Donor
Donor badge, no ads + more benefits.
Donor badge, no ads + more benefits.
Advertisement
Track List
| 1 | Flesh and Bone 4:01 | 85 |
| 2 | Runaways 4:06 | 81 |
| 3 | The Way It Was 3:54 | 76 |
| 4 | Here With Me 4:54 | 63 |
| 5 | A Matter of Time 4:13 | 63 |
| 6 | Deadlines and Commitments 4:24 | 58 |
| 7 | Miss Atomic Bomb 4:54 | 84 |
| 8 | The Rising Tide 4:20 | 58 |
| 9 | Heart of a Girl 4:36 | 61 |
| 10 | From Here On Out 2:30 | 64 |
| 11 | Be Still 4:35 | 61 |
| 12 | Battle Born 5:17 | 78 |
Total Length: 51 minutes
Advertisement
Added on: July 26, 2012