Henry Metal
So it Hath Begun

So it Hath Begun is the name of the debut album by anonymous metaller Henry Metal who claims in his bio that the relative anonymity is an advantage for several reasons, like honesty – the ability to be mean without anyone knowing, like an internet troll perhaps. I can write whatever I think of an album without being anonymous and I think it is a bit cowardly to not stand for what you say. But of course anonymity has its advantages, if he gets really big the adoring fans may have a difficult time knowing who he is – though I doubt he will ever get that big, to reach that far you have to make music that stands apart from everything else. Often something ground breaking in some regard and that is something Mr Henry doesn’t achieve. At least not on this album, but he is releasing two more albums this year so chances are that one of the other two might be exciting – I only have time to review this one as there are so many other albums coming into my mailbox every day so I don’t have time to write about three from the same guy.

I would say that the music on this album is cowardly. Henry Metal offers nothing we haven’t heard before, classic heavy rock music in the veins of the early days of rock and metal. There is nothing unique here, he is painting by numbers, but at least there is some nonsensical attempts at humour which sometimes succeeds and other times fails, metal that doesn’t take itself too serious is at least one positive side. The singer isn’t fantastic, okay for the type of music but nothing more. The production on the other hand is a lot better, modern and attractive with great sound and energy. I think that the songs are overall more or less what you can expect from an album of this kind, not overly much variation over the nine tracks and a vinyl length playing time. I can’t help but thinking that this is another guy playing the nostalgia card, and it is getting boring as it was the same yesterday and has been way too often lately.

Nothing overly special, a bit cowardly in many regards, but I would still claim that it is a rather good album. It is catchy with pretty good songs and a good flow throughout and those into the nostalgic stuff should certainly find this one appealing. It offers nothing new but it is well made and well performed, songs like the opening one and Squeeze Me makes it pretty worthwhile even though I doubt it will make more than the tiniest dent in the history of rock music. Still, it could definitely be an album worth checking out for those who like nostalgic music.

And if you like this one, Henry Metal has put out two more albums just for your (or his) pleasure. This has me wondering, couldn’t he just have taken the best tracks and put together a really good album instead? In the end though I think that we can claim that this is a rather good album for the nostalgic rocker, though I doubt it will make any lasting impression in anyone’s mind.

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