Beast In Black have officially launched the campaign for their fourth studio album. The Finnish heavy metal band released “Fear The Beast” on September 10 alongside an elaborate cinematic video, confirming that the song will also serve as the title track of their forthcoming album of the same name.
The release offers the first formal introduction to the follow-up to Dark Connection, which arrived in 2021. No release date, tracklist or physical configurations for Fear The Beast have been announced yet, but the title track establishes both the musical direction and visual language surrounding the band’s next record.
Written and produced by Anton Kabanen, “Fear The Beast” draws directly from Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien. Kabanen, however, points to his longstanding fascination with H.R. Giger’s biomechanical artwork as the deeper reason behind the song.
The guitarist and songwriter says he has experienced recurring dreams since his teenage years in which a xenomorph pursues him through dystopian environments. That combination of fear and fascination eventually became the conceptual foundation of the track, with Kabanen viewing the creature not simply as something grotesque, but as an unsettling combination of elegance, sensuality, intensity and menace.
That idea carries directly into the accompanying video. While the song itself is based exclusively on the original Alien, Beast In Black also drew from James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens when shaping the clip, particularly its industrial environments. The video was directed by Katri Ilona Koppanen, with Emil Pohjalainen and Nestruction Studios involved in its production.
A central element of the new visual world is the XENOBEAST, a creature designed by longtime Beast In Black visual collaborator Roman Ismailov, who also created the single artwork. Kabanen says the idea of developing Giger-inspired cover art dates back to early 2020, when he and Ismailov were working on the first concepts for Dark Connection in Turku. The idea was ultimately saved for the band’s fourth album.
Musically, “Fear The Beast” retains the foundations Beast In Black have established since Berserker: melodic heavy metal powered by dance-oriented rhythms, synthesizers, immediate riffs, large choruses and the considerable vocal range of Yannis Papadopoulos. It also arrives following the addition of guitarist Markus Venehsalo, who officially joined the band in June while sessions for the fourth record were already underway. Nuclear Blast said at the time that Venehsalo had contributed lead work to the album during the selection process.
The single is Beast In Black’s first new release since “Enter The Behelit,” their April 2025 collaboration connected to the crossover between Diablo and Berserk. The project continued the group’s longstanding creative relationship with the themes and imagery of Kentaro Miura’s manga.
Beast In Black will now take the next phase of their career back to the road. September dates include Tokyo, Taipei, Shanghai and Beijing, followed in October by the extensive Resurrection Tour 2026 with Sonata Arctica and Frozen Crown. The European itinerary runs through late November before additional Finnish dates close out the year.
With three albums released since 2017 and more than five years having passed since Dark Connection, “Fear The Beast” finally provides the first substantial look at Beast In Black’s fourth full-length. When the complete album will arrive remains to be announced.
