Into the Night

Album Review

This Swedish quartet plays retro heavy metal straight from 1980-1981: fast riffs; extremely high-pitched vocals; rumbling melodic basslines; and thwacking, high-energy drums. Anyone old enough to have heard bands like Angel Witch, Diamond Head, Rage, Exciter, and even very early Iron Maiden will immediately recognize the sounds on Into the Night. The question is, does Enforcer have anything to offer beyond a trip in the wayback machine? The answer to that is an emphatic "maybe." They've got energy and talent to spare — their songs have catchy melodies, memorable choruses, fluid guitar solos, and dynamics. There's even a churning instrumental for when vocalist Olof Wikstrand's piercing wail gets tiring. And it's easy to argue that metal, being one of rock's most formalist genres, doesn't require bands to bring anything genuinely new to the table. They just have to do what they do well, and they can be as retro as the Stray Cats — fans will headbang wildly nonetheless. So taken at face value, and not as some kind of ironic joke at the expense of early-'80s metal (which they're clearly not), yeah, Enforcer kinda kill it. And while it's easy to hope young listeners will encounter their work and be tempted to investigate the bands that pioneered this sound decades earlier, Into the Night stands on its own.