The Batlord

I love the chaps. The best thing is the video to "Blow Your Speakers", where you don't notice Eric Adams is wearing them, until he turns around and it's just MAN ASS IN YOUR FACE!!!





That's what metal is about, right there.

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Unknown Soldier

You should've done this in chronological order rather than just random hits.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

The Batlord

A.) Except for the demo, those were from Manowar week, when I was plugging in gaps rather than worrying about a full discography, and B.) I won't necessarily always go in chronological order anyway, which is what index in the OP is for.

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The Batlord

What you've basically got here is British Steel without the diversity. Of course there are "Dark Avenger", "Battle Hymn", and that damn bass solo that's on almost every old school Manowar album (all on the B-side), but the meat of the album is two-dimensional Judas Priest worship, or maybe Saxon, though without riffs quite as brilliant as the latter band (but who can compete with Saxon's riffs?). The only real difference on the first half is that the proto-speed metal sound those bands were developing is a bit more polished, even if Manowar showed no desire at the time to continue evolving in that direction.

What sets the band's Priest-like songs apart from actual Priest for me is that Manowar have an almost unparalleled knack for being energetic and anthemic. "Metal Daze", "Manowar", "Fast Taker", etc are actually more enjoyable to me than a lot of the bands they're quasi-ripping off, just because they are more infectious and fist-pumping (Yeah, I'm totally saying I'd rather listen to this than anything Priest was doing at the time, excluding possibly Screaming for Vengeance). It definitely helps that Eric Adams is the perfect singer to pull off the attitude and swagger that gives the band so much of their charisma.

They don't have any straight-forward metal songs that rise to the creative levels of the twin-guitar assault of "Electric Eye", the riff orgasm that is "Wheels of Steel", or the sheer metal perfection of "Killers", but in general the trashier songs on Battle Hymns just infect my ears to a more insidious degree than any full album being put out by a band whose name wasn't Iron Maiden. The fact that Manowar weren't adding anything new is almost beside the point as far as I'm concerned.

Then of course there are "Dark Avenger" and "Battle Hymn", two songs that don't get nearly enough credit for pioneering a different sound in 80s metal. Even the very tiny handful of doom metal pioneers of the time were more concerned with aping Black Sabbath than really blazing any trails, whereas Manowar took the fantasy aspects of traditional metal and created a sound that suited those lyrics far better than anything Dio ever put out (Sorry, Ronnie, but it is what it is). Many bands since have realized that slowing down rather than speeding up can be far more effective in evoking an epic atmosphere, but Manowar were pretty much on their own in 1982.

It's easy for someone not versed in early eighties metal to not get how different this sound was *cough*Ori*cough*Machine*cough*, but I would challenge them to find anything from that time period to compare with "Battle Hymn" and "Dark Avenger" (along with their next two albums). The only things that come to mind are Saxon's "Crusader" -- which came a full two years after this album -- and Candlemass kinda sorta -- who released their first album four years after Battle Hymn. Whatever you want to say about Manowar being cheesy or unoriginal, they did have a legitimate period of unique creativity.

Like every "great" Manowar album, this is a flawed masterpiece of inconsistent originality and just plain fun metal songs, and aside from the mercifully short bass solo "William's Tale", this is arguably their most consistent album, along with Hail to England. If you dig trashy '80s metal beyond simply Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, then this is essential listening as far as I'm concerned. ****ing hail.

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Oriphiel

Your review of Battle Hymns was kind of odd to me. I really don't mean any offense, but it seems like over half of it was just you apologizing for Manowar's lack of creativity and originality. It's almost like you're saying "Alright, these guys suck, but... they're kinda fun." Anyway, when it comes to this part...

I don't know if I agree with that. From what I've heard so far, Manowar were indeed good at making relatively slow and intense songs with epic imagery and lyrics, without getting too Doom-y like the various Black Sabbath clones, and they also had some fun speed-metal tracks. However, there were plenty of bands achieving these sounds, even ten to fifteen years before Manowar, back in the late sixties and early seventies. Off the top of my head, Lucifer's Friend and Wicked Lady's sounds weren't too far off from what Manowar was doing, both with the slow/intense songs with epic lyrics and vivid imagery, as well as the speed-metal numbers (if you don't know who Wicked Lady was, go ask Unknown_Soldier ).

The Batlord

Supposedly this is the original version of "Defender", which was released later on Fighting the World. The only difference is a heavier production and an extra thirty seconds of cheesy fantasy narration by Orson Welles(!). It's a decent tune, with the slow, epic heaviness of their Into Glory Ride sound, but doesn't have quite the power of that material. I said on my Fighting the World review that it sounded like a castoff from this period in their career, and I stand by that. I can only assume that they released this as a single because they didn't think it was quite up to snuff to include it on their next album, Into Glory Ride, and either didn't want to waste it, or figured it was at least good enough to garner some interest for their upcoming full-length.

Unfortunately I could only find the '93 version with "Hatred" (which is easily the weakest song off Into Glory Ride, but still has more personality than "Defender"), so I can't know if the single version of "Gloves of Metal" sounds any different to the version from their sophomore album. I'm assuming it's probably just the same song, which would make it easily the biggest reason to listen to this single, as it's a heavy, fist-pumping song, and one of the greatest metal anthems of all time.

To be perfectly honest, if you already have Into Glory Ride and Fighting the World, then there really isn't any reason to listen to, let alone own this single, unless you're just an obsessive completist.

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The Batlord

Not apologizing, just stating facts. Half of Battle Hymns is a retread of what other bands had already done. I'm just giving my subjective opinion that for the most part, I'd rather listen to Manowar than Judas Priest and a lot of more pioneering bands.

Gave those a listen, and while I'm sure Manowar drew influence from earlier bands -- no band completely reinvents the wheel after all -- those songs really only sounded superficially like anything off of Manowar's early albums. Can you really compare a song like "March for Revenge" off of Into Glory Ride to any of those songs you posted? If so then you'd have to call Iron Maiden a shameless Judas Priest ripoff.

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Oriphiel

Those songs weren't meant to be compared to Manowar's whole discography, only "Battle Hymns" and "Dark Avenger". Obviously, they're not going to sound completely similar, since they were made by different bands (and, in Wicked Lady's case, with virtually no budget, as those songs were recorded live in a garage). However, it's hard to listen to a song like "Ship of Ghosts" and then one of Manowar's slow and epic songs without seeing a pretty clear line of succession. I just wanted to give examples of how Manowar weren't the only ones doing it, neither in their time nor the past. But don't take this as an insult against them; just because they weren't the first doesn't mean that they weren't the best, which is still a valid matter of opinion.

And yes, "March of Revenge" does sound like one of the songs I posted. Lucifer's Friend's "In the Time of Job" captures the same epic imagery, the same power vocals, the same riff-based attack. To me, they're much more than "superficially similar" (also, the song kind of reminds me of Dio, especially vocally). However, i'm not completely unreasonable, and I can understand your point of view.

But yeah, I can give more examples, if you like. The drumming and synth work at the beginning of "March for Revenge" remind me of Curved Air's "Young Mother" (Curved Air Live, 1974), and Sonja captures the power vocals pretty well. Of course, Curved Air replaces the thrashy guitar riffing with electric violin hijinks, but other than that, the two songs sound fairly similar. But if you want something more heavy and thrashy, once the song gets going, it reminds me of the band Dust and their heavy song "Suicide" (Hard Attack, 1972. This song came out ten years before Battle Hymns, yet the vocals, guitars, and drums all sound very similar to Manowar).

Unknown Soldier

Don't ask me I'd never heard of them till today. On the Spirit of Metal page Manowar has 2181 fans and Wicked Lady 8. So I don't feel so bad about not knowing them.

The Batlord is probably the truest metal fan on this whole forum as he just about appreciates the good things in every metal sub-genre and not just the poseur crap like Tool etc.

Manowar live and breathe metal, they're like the chosen disciples and even when the songs are bad, they're still kind of great anyway.

Into Glory Ride is their greatest statement as a band, it's big, bold and cheesy and only they dared to release something like this and didn't give a crap what anybody thought. Into Glory Ride is a blueprint for power metal as Paranoid was a blueprint for 70s metal making it a legendary album.

I wouldn't really compare Lucifer's Friend to a band like Manowar or any of the bands that you've suggested, odd songs here and there yer, but a band like Lucifer's Friend were an organ driven progressive rock-metal band that were putting out a sound similar to what Uriah Heep were doing at this time, probably darker but still similar. Organ driven bands at this time were two a penny as there were just so many of them. Whereas Manowar by their second album had turned into something unique in metal regardless of their quality.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Oriphiel

If Unknown_Soldier thinks Manowar was unique, then I can't really argue with him, since he was actually there when all of this was going down (while I was still yet to be born). When it comes to Metal, I'll defer to his wisdom.