Review Summary: Henry Metal continues his journey of combining heavy riffs with humor and social commentary.
If you by any chance have the impression that you have run into name Henry Metal too many times during 2017, that might have something to do with the fact that the guy came upon the scene that year, and immediately put out four albums!
Sure, King Gizzard and The Wizzard Lizzard issued five of that the same year, so good old heavy Henry is maybe trying to catch up with them? After all, his new one War In Heaven missed being the fifth in the same year by one day - it came out January 1, 2018.
And although the Gizzard guys have, here and there, a penchant for a good riff themselves, and a sense of humor that should not be neglected, Henry Metal is all humor and riffs. Metal riffs. Well, most of the time. He can get serious, since, although most of the time he tends to put on a smiling face, that smiling face contains some serious social commentaries. On War In Heaven, he tries to deal with quite serious things like child abuse and greed (“Daisy” and “When Will It Be Enough?”), but some ‘pure’ comedy takes a lead (“Nunchaku” and “Medusa”, for example).
Still it is the metal riffs, most of his listeners so far will probably be searching out, although he does try to go the way of so-called power ballad here and there - like in the aforementioned “Daisy” or in part, as in “Epic”, where in both of them, the easier tempo gives way to yet another series of metal riffs .
And while Henry’s humor can be a hit and miss affair, depending on your taste, he is an absolute know-it-all as far as any form of metal is concerned and is very adept to producing a great riff. He obviously has heard them all and played them all.
Somebody might ask is good old Henry coming up with something new musically? But, in his case, the question is misplaced - his riffs are good enough, and are nothing drastically new, the point with the guy is that he is trying to introduce some serious stuff through metal and humor. Sometimes he succeeds, sometimes he doesn’t. But at least he is trying, and when he does succeed it does sound good.
