Album Review: Killers’ Battle Born Explodes With Vitality

By Courtney Foster

Our country-gone-pop princess Taylor Swift may be haunted, and alternatively, Lana del Rey may have been born to die. But for The Killers, could things look less morose?

They’re Battle Born.

After four long years, The Killers have pulled themselves out of dormancy with the recent release of their full-length, 12-track album.

Of course, their new work was received both with pleasure and with contempt, but I personally took the news with delight. That being said, I love music with a passion—and not at all in a picky or pretentious way. My ears revel in melodies spanning so many eras and genres that I pride myself in maintaining as much blindness as I can to such boundaries and constrictions.

My attitude is that all music should be appreciated, because what matters is that everyone takes part in this joy of song. Forget the shtick of those who use their music preferences to give themselves a higher stature, or to proclaim themselves Artsier-Than-Thou. Big deal.

So I’m no critic. But to me, Battle Born truly packed a punch. The only way I can describe the sound they produced is: out of this world.

Track one, “Flesh and Bone,” gave me my first taste. It began softly, like a pulse, flickering with a somewhat atonal electric beat. Slowly, gradually, shimmering synchs took hold, and already, I knew that something bombastic and space-age was going to flourish. Something positively epic.

In my head I saw a cold, black sky, a glowing lunar surface, and metallic spacecraft with flood lamps casting about holographic light. I felt my heart rate increase just by listening, like the music had just kindled a small fire within me.

It’s kind of weird how I could think so much before the first 20 seconds of the song had even passed.

Adding lyrics, leading vocalist Brandon Flowers sang with a familiar tension that seemed a spitting image of “Human” from The Killers’ last release, Day & Age (2008). With his winning, twisted croon, Flowers needed only to produce the words “I’ve gone through life white-knuckled in the moments that left me behind” to reveal a definite development.

As an adult looking back on his youth, Flowers now had a certain vantage point which he lacked in ’08. Although tonally similar to before, everything now seemed more rooted, having reached another level of maturity. Maybe it came from his words, maybe from something else– I can’t really put my finger on it.

Deep drums rumbled, and I saw a flaming red sky with an oozing, molten sun. I pictured lions and gazelles galloping rhythmically across an open savanna. Basically The Lion King. (Forgive my Disney heritage.) I’m not a synesthete, either, but the music just created something visual and picturesque.

Suddenly, “FLESH AND BONE!” rang like a war cry, and I knew how to describe this sonic entourage.

It was exactly the opposite of death. It was an explosion of pure life.

My opinion of the rest of the remaining eleven tracks is highly irrelevant. I could go on, but why bother when clearly, talking matters less and listening matters more?
How about a final word from a YouTube fan whose views seem a whole lot more legitimate than mine…“sounds like Meat Loaf and Bruce Springsteen had killer kids.”