You know, what the hell? As in the case of The Number of the Beast, I'll always love Battle Hymns more, as it was the first Manowar album I ever got (and their debut) but I readily admit this is far superior. BH gives you the idea of a lot of disjointed songs, without any real common thread until right at the end, which kind of makes the ending of that album almost a prequel to this.
By Into Glory Ride though, Manowar have their shtick well and truly together. On Battle Hymns, there's little real reference to swords, sorcery or kind of even sex, with a lot of mixed metaphors, and you look at the sleeve and wonder is this some sort of neo-Nazi band? But the cover of IGR leaves no room for doubt. Sure, it's cheesy as all hell, but that's Manowar for you. They're not meant to be taken seriously.
This album reeks of quality cheese though, and while I agree "Warlord" is almost more a song that belongs on the previous album, and "Hatred" is pretty OTT even for Manowar (and little more than an excuse for Ross to wank off on the guitar in a similar way to how Joey showed us how badass on the bass he is on "William's Tale") the epic power and depth of the rest of the songs more than make up for these slight low points, and lead into the third in their "golden age", if you will, period, with Hail to England waiting to unleash a powerful salvo in support of its dark brother here.
Perfect? No, but very damn close. God tier indeed.
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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018
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