14. Manowar Hail to England 1984 (Music For Nations)
Power Metal
The Isles of the blessed shall lay waste before us.
The Lowdown
The kings of celebration metal and all its established clichés really hit the big time on their third studio album
Hail to England, for the simple reason this was their first album to actually chart anywhere (based on the info that I have) where it reached a modest 83 spot on the UK album charts (probably helped by its title and glorious album cover) the album title was surely inspired as a nod to their metal heroes across the Atlantic. As a band Manowar were so influential on 1980s metal, where they can probably be seen as the principal motivators of the power metal genre, a fact that was already evident on their previous two studio albums
Battle Hymns and
Into Glory Ride. The former
Battle Hymns can be seen as a kind of basic ‘roots power metal album’ largely due to its meandering “Dark Avenger” and “Battle Hymn” tracks, which was the direction that the band would take on
Into Glory Ride.
Into Glory Ride was very much an album of epic proportions that can best be described as a ‘celebration of norse mythology’ and at the same time it helped to evolve the ‘power metal’ genre. By the time of
Hail to England the band were more focused on combining the elements of the previous two albums into a more receptive metal dish and the album can be viewed as a fusion of success in that respect. The tracks again are mostly penned by bassist Joey DeMaio and the album opens up with “Blood of My Enemies” which carries straight over from the previous album
Into Glory Ride style wise. The album though takes on its own character by its second track the bass heavy “Each Dawn I Die” which is truly one barbarian badass track and one of the definitive Manowar tracks out there. “Kill with Power” is meat and drink Manowar and this is the type of metal track that easily inspires a bout of metal listening gluttony in me. The title track “Hail to England” is a celebration track and lyrically sounds like the usual American fantastical view of England. “Army of the Immortals" is my favourite track on the whole album where Eric Adams sounds very akin to Rob Halford and the track is the kind of great driving melodic metal that I love and as Eric Adams sings ‘metal makes us stronger“ the song just bows out on epic proportions. The inevitable instrumental in “Black Arrows” was always due to arrive and evokes memories in places of Eddie Van Halen’s “Eruption”. The album closes with the 8 minute epic “Bridge of Death” and like the opening track easily could’ve have been on
Into Glory Ride. Overall
Hail to England might well be a better known album than
Into Glory Ride but it doesn’t come across as as innovative or as epic as that release (that album cracked the top 10 of my 1983 list) but what it does achieve, is to shorten down the band’s lengthy tracks from the previous album to a more palatable length, making the compositions sound tighter and at the same time issue out what could be coined as the first true ‘quintessential power metal album’ certainly in a European context anyway, because despite being an American band these New York barbarians sound quite European on a lot of this album. Needless to say vocalist Eric Adams with his multi-octave voice shines across all the tracks and it’s clearly evident that he’s influenced by iconic vocalists like Ian Gillan and Rob Halford, and he certainly has the power and talent to live with those two. On top of all this, the band's lyrics must be some of the most brilliantly penned cheesy lyrics to ever grace metal and that alone makes Manowar always a great listen. The breakthrough of
Hail to England quickly ushered the band to record their fourth album
Sign of the Hammer which also came out the same year as this album, but ended up being as poor as this was great and most reviews agree with that as well.
Hail to England was produced by Canadian Jack Richardson who had some interesting works already in his CV by the way of Alice Cooper, Max Webster, Badfinger and Moxy amongst others. As far as Manowar go though, this again is another salute to glorious metal and yet again Manowar do that kind of thing better than most.
Eric Adams- Vocals
Ross the Boss- Guitar
Joey DeMaio- Bass
Scott Columbus- Drums
Production- Jack Richardson