Manowar - Warriors Of The World Review

Posted by Evocator Manes on 09.28.2002

Hold your swords up high and hail the return of the metal Kings

If you have been following the release of this heavily anticipated release following a 6 year drought after the somewhat disappointing Louder Than Hell album at all on the internet, then you are already aware of the absurd controversy surrounding this album. The main point of contention appears to be that Manowar delves too deeply into slower material and drops the metal banner for half the album.

They may have a valid point. Manowar has long built it’s reputation, at times to the point of overkill, on full-fledged deafening heavy metal, to the point of insistence on the slaying of poseurs, defilers, practitioners of false metal and other undesirables. So, when Manowar moves into symphonic operetta pieces such as Nessun Dorma, then covers an Elvis song on the same record, the legions of followers indoctrinated by the band to believe in metal above all else have no choice but to wonder what the fuck. The move is akin to Elijah Muhammad insisting every one go out and buy a few 8 packs of pork chops at the local supermarket.

On the other hand, bands should not be chained to their past. If Manowar wants to put piano or the beeping of a programmable digital watch on the album, they should be able to. The job of a reviewer is ostensibly to talk about the music on a disc and to a lesser extent, whether or not it is any good or valid, etc. At times, though, the band’s history and philosophy is inseparable from an accurate accounting of an album, hence the running into of problems.

There is no question that this is and has been one of the most immensely talented collection of individuals making up a band in history. Eric Adams has retained very single nuance of his stellar voice, Joey DeMaio is in the top two of bass players of all time, Scott Columbus continues his massive drum assault, hitting the damn things so hard he had to have a specially built kit built because he kept breaking conventional ones. Karl Logan, the relative newcomer here, has proved himself as a more than capable replacement for Ross The Boss, though Logan is better in technique and less so in songwriting prowess than Ross.

As talented as Manowar is, they never overplay their parts in any given song for the purposes of chop demonstration. The main focus is the song and the best songs are the anthemic marching tunes. From Bridge Of Death to Gates Of Valhalla to most of the Kings Of Metal album, their forté has always been creating excellent battle-lore heavy war-cry metal. As for this album, the song order is odd, to say the least. Manowar revised it approximately 50 times before finally just giving up and releasing the disc, but they might have been better served to work on leading the songs into each other, instead of the haphazard roller coaster ride Warriors offers.

The first song Call To Arms is an instant classic and Swords In The Wind will be a crowd-pleaser for years to come. The attack on September 11 of last year influenced the band to infuse a highly patriotic bend to the disc itself, nearly to the point of grandiose rhetoric. I’m not calling them on the carpet because of this, but rather pointing out that which will be inescapably obvious when the disc is played back.

The WTC mass murder spawned at least one song on this disc, The Fight For Freedom and probably was the basis for the inclusion of An American Trilogy. While the forays into previous heretofore unexplored territory are interesting and well-performed, recording and incorporating an orchestral pit tune-up into a song (The March – no doubt a tip of the hat to Peter Jackson’s Fellowship Of The Ring movie release) is unquestionably bizarre and odd for Manowar. As for the song itself, to quote Philip Anselmo on the Superjoint disc, I don’t understand what the big fucking deal is. It’s not like Manowar has never had classical tunes – largely by bass-only run throughs from Joey DeMaio – on their discs before.

The lasting impression of this album is of an inconsistent juggernaut. There is so much to absorb that it is little surprise that several fans are surrendering repeated listenings of the more melodic material here in favor of the more familiar tunes of bloodlust. It is hard really to know what to think of this album, the song order is nonsensical, even some of the selections, while done very well, are curious at the very least.

When the band drops the somewhat pretentiousness of the operas, the symphonies and the Elvis covers and gets back to flooring things, such as on Hand Of Doom (not a cover of the Sabbath song) the sheer sonic assault makes those other diversions seem almost as a memory of something you may have heard spoken of, but never attempted, or perhaps a CD of another side project, at least until the repeat function rolls over the playing track.

In the end, the classical and cover selections don’t really matter. If looked at in the view of perspective, all three of those songs are impeccably rendered experiments and stand on their own well as songs. Aside from playing the disc, it is likely that they will never be heard outside of your local CD player. It is highly improbable that Manowar will be adding the Elvis cover to their setlist, unlike the aforementioned Call To Arms, Fight For Freedom, Swords In The Wind, Warriors Of The World and Fight Until We Die. It is equally doubtful they will be interested in laying out the plentiful amounts of mean green it will take to drag an orchestra pit along with them to perform two rather unkindly-received songs.

If you are already a fan of Manowar, the three or four songs that have nothing to do with heavy metal will seem as nothing more than a stumbling block. For the people out there that already hate Manowar, no amount of covers or pretty piano playing is going to change that. For the ones in the middle, they will likely experience a pleasant surprise in the admirable shift in the considerable talents of this band. I commend them for exploring their capabilities, some of which were quite unprecedented are now highlighted on this disc, but recognize it can be off-putting.
Moderate to highly recommended.