Review by Daniel for Manowar - Hail to England (1984)

The first two studio records from the polarizing New York epic metal institution known as Manowar connected with me on varying levels. 1982's debut album “Battle Hymns” presented a fresh & original take on the traditional heavy sound & their can be no denying the huge influence it had on the future direction of the epic metal subgenre. Its highlights were certainly worthy of as many fists as you can muster however I've never had any qualms about claiming it to be an inconsistent record with its losses being just as poor as its highlights were impressive. Overall though, the B side bestowed enough metal glory on its listeners to overcome the obvious flaws of the A sides less ambitious & predominantly rockier material. 1983’s follow-up album “Into Glory Ride” saw the classic Manowar line-up coming together for the first time following the arrival of drummer Scott Colombus & the result was a much more focused, dark & doomy sound that really got under my skin. That’s not to say that it was a perfect record as it still possessed a blemish or two but it showcased a more mature band which seemed to possess a greater understanding of what they were trying to achieve & this new version of Manowar sat very well with me indeed.

And now that brings us to 1984 where Manowar looked to consolidate on the strength of their early works & some lengthy & arduous touring schedules by releasing not one but TWO new albums & these would go on to be known as the two that would define Manowar’s career right up until the current day. But the subject of this review is the first of those two;  the band’s piece-de-resistance… the epic “Hail To England” album. It’s interesting that the band chose to name the record in such a way given that they’re a US band but supposedly this was for a couple of reasons. 1. They wanted the title to acknowledge the role that the English played in both the creation & the continued expansion of the heavy metal genre & 2. They were looking to cash in on the fact that Manowar was much more popular in Europe than they were in their native America. Hhhmmmm…. That all sounds like a bit of a wank to me. I’ve always felt that for all their true metal/death to false metal posturing, Joey DeMaio & co never let their eyes drift from their commercial & egotistical ambitions for too long. The cover artwork the adorns “Hail To England” was certainly the band’s best effort to date though & I think that definitely added to the products appeal. It displays a colourful image of a proud warrior in the midst of an epic battle with bloody sword in one hand & the English flag in the other. It’s a much more convincing & mature image than the band’s previous efforts & it definitely suits the Manowar sound & image much more comfortably than their cheap & (at times) embarrassing earlier efforts.

It’s a very short album clocking in at just over 33 minutes & including only the seven tracks. The more drawn-out & lengthy compositions we saw on “Into Glory Ride” have been replaced by shorter & more accessible songs that require a bit less patience to take in & I think this is a strong contributor in the album’s wider appeal. Only closing number “Bridge Of Death” can be regarded as lengthy as it clocks in at almost nine minutes. When you first press play on “Hail To England” you should prepare yourself for a shock though because the production job is very strange indeed. In fact I’d go so far as to label it as horrible! The rhythm guitars are almost completely lost in the mix while the bass guitar is all the way out front & the drums seem almost detached from the rest of the instruments with an annoyingly big snare sound. There’s this big gap where the rhythm guitars should be & when Ross The Boss comes in with his solos they cut through the mix really well due to the lack of competition which makes them sound really good but overall I have to say that I find this production to create a substantial obstacle for me to overcome if I’m going to enjoy this album. Vocalist Eric Adams is in fine form as usual & he sounds really good here with an emotive & over-the-top performance & I do think that we get Ross’s best work from a lead guitar point of view but Joey DeMaio & Scott Columbus’s rhythm section tend to keep things very basic & given how far out the front they sit in the mix I feel that they needed to contribute more than this if the album was going to recover from the lack of rhythm guitars.

But that’s not the only issue with the guitars. The other is the noticeable lack of riffs! They seem to have gone missing for the most part with the band preferring to go with simple galloping power chords to accompany the vocal hooks which in effect makes for a more commercially accessible feel that I would imagine has contributed further to the appeal of the album. Manowar really haven’t tried anything majorly different here. This is pretty much a summary of everything they’ve done to date. We get faster thrashier numbers like “Kill With Power”, epic battle numbers like “Hail To England”, “Bridge Of Death” & “Blood Of My Enemies” & the obligatory Joey DeMaio bass solo piece in “Black Arrows” which is once again the low point of the album. He honestly has no idea of just how poor he sounds on these complete wank-fests. He sacrifices all precision & technique in the hope that the listener will appreciate how fast me can play but I don’t there’s too much doubt that most top level guitarists can play that fast if they forget about doing it cleanly. Interestingly enough, there’s a fair bit more cheese about this album than there was on “Into Glory Ride” & it’s starting to become clear that Manowar fans consider this to be one of the band’s drawcards while someone like myself who struggles with cheese is always going to recoil from it. This increase in cheese is almost certainly the reason that many critics claim “Hail To England” as Manowar’s first US power metal album too. I can’t say that it’s very different to their other releases though so this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I can actually see merit in claiming all three Manowar albums as US power metal to be honest but if you do that you’re pretty much making the epic metal term redundant because it doesn’t get much more epic metal than this.

Overall, I’d have to say that "Hail To England" had some potential but it’s hard to say just how much as I simply can’t get past the awful production. Of the seven tracks on offer I only enjoy three so even though a majority of Manowar fans consider this to be the band’s best work, I find it to be comfortably the weakest of their first three records.