By: Manilla Road

Original Date: March 20th, 1980

Format used: CD

Rating: 4/5

Manilla Road’s debut suffers from a feeling of freshman awkwardness. The beard is patchy, the lunch is spilled in the cafeteria, the whole shebang. But nobody can deny the swaggering and confident lad is phony. And he has passion and a realness that is endearing.

That is the essence of Invasion. The biggest problem, if it can be called that, is Manilla Road are still refining their craft. This album is jam heavy – with lots of guitar tricks – if you didn’t tell me no keyboards were used except on the intro of “street jammer”, I would assume that a lot of the ambient wailing was done through synths. And while there’s good control of the nascent guitar sounds, we do see Manilla Road somewhat struggling to find their sound. There’s a lot of space rock, lots of what would otherwise be be called doom fuzz, and a healthy dose of hard rock. This album can be called straight up rock as much as it can be called Metal at this point in Manilla Road’s career. And that is part of the charm, the ambition and the journey to accomplish it.

This album will not be for everyone, it is too foot deep in 70s convention, and basement-jam experimentation, the lyrics are a little hit or miss too – but if you can forgive that – Invasion is a solid listen that gives us insights into what is to come from Manilla Road. I would recommend this album moreso for the fans who want to hear the full sonic history of Manilla Road as well as for fans of straight up old timey rock.