complete Manowar reviews from RKM!

[MartinPopoff]

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Martin
Manowar - Battle Hymns
(Liberty '82)

And so it is conceived, the Manowar kingdom, borne of U.S. muscle
and might, trash-talking confrontation with those who pose and oppose,
spiritual descendants of The Nuge (especially on Shell Shock), embracing
the new power genre in full combat fatigue. Never mind that the music
won't catch up to the spiel until Hail To England, vocalist Eric Adams
is Attitude on full throttle, and the trademark trashy bass and drums
foundation is articulated albeit in somewhat primitive form. Still,
while the claims to heaviest on the hill ring a little premature,
Battle Hymns is chock full o' anthemic punter nuggets, tastiest being
Manowar, a soccer chant of a tune rendered greasy and trustworthy
by Adams' killer delivery. Also our first of many insect-like bass
solos with the hyper William's Tale (William Tell Overture on uppers).
Immediately rowdy, outcast alcohol metal with vacuum-packed isolation
from current overseas trends, Manowar's debut tends to leak melody
like old American metal, an important factor in making this one of
the more accessible Manowar mental tattoos, uniformally moving it
along into glory ride.

Rating  8

Manowar - Into Glory Ride
(Megaforce '83)
Parallel this to Trouble's The Skull, both following up by slowing
it down and crawling under in the name of establishing band psyche;
metallic backdrop over which to future play. Into Glory Ride is even
more crusty and archaic than the debut, smashing and hitting and beating
on songs in no way strong enough to take the battery. However, the
Manowar religion becomes firmly transcribed with three <169>of<170>
songs in a row, Secret Of Steel, Gloves Of Metal, and Gates Of Valhalla,
which basically sum up (along with the album covers) the band's unstoppable,
delusional mission to conquer. Trashy, grungy, and weighted with Viking
swords, Into Glory Ride is the lost Manowar record, a transition between
first life and one of a kind, fur-lined fantasia.

Rating  6

Manowar - Hail To England
(Music For Nations '84)
Ross The Boss, Eric Adams, Joey DeMaio and Scott Columbus come bone-breaking
back with their strongest to date, a record that is my sentimental
favorite, arriving at the peak of my metallic dependence. Monikered
to thank Manowar's mighty fan base in the U.K. versus a noticeably
smaller following stateside, Hail To England was a heroic, over-blown
facemelt of a record, filled with excessive, mercilessly recorded
metal gems, clocked at various welcome velocities, each bloody tale
a beacon of stone thumping victoriously on its own. Side one,Blood
Of My Enemies, Each Dawn I Die, Kill With Power and the title track
is the most solid side of Manowar to date, highlighted by cut three,
one face-pasting OTT shredder that became for a good six months my
catalyst to rise and move forward each morning. Hail To England triumphantly
made audible the buzz that metal was capable of installing in one's
brain, using typical Manowar language fused to the band's trademark
distortion levels to drive the point home like a ruby-encrusted dagger
through the heart, all four corners of the attack pulverizing with
over-the top beatings of their chosen weapons. In the end, Hail To
England kills with power because of its unquenchable will to power,
a knowledge that its blackened but unbowed spirit cannot be compromised.

Rating  10

(Reprinted From Riff Kills Man!: 25 Years Of Recorded Hard Rock &
Heavy Metal. 1,942 record reviews spanning the years 1968-1993, 445
pages, $20 including tax and shipping from Power Chord Press, P.O.
Box 65208, 358 Danforth Ave., Toronto, Ontario, M4K 3Z2. Note: Mention
you saw this in BOC-1, and receive free, 575 reviews written since
the book was published.)

Manowar - Sign Of the Hammer
(10 '84)
And the roaring poseur bonfire finds more vindictive petrol, as the
Immovable Four follow up a head-strafing classic with yet another,
in a metal year that is owned by the band, at least in terms of respect,
underground buzz and European media coverage. Steadfast and resolute
in their calling to be the loudest, heaviest, bad-ass force on stage,
Sign Of The Hammer has that same chaotic, hysterical production sound,
a grinding, buzzing battle between pumped-up man and machine, which
even infects near ballad Mountains (strummed sensitively on bass),
a surprisingly catchy piece of dynamic bravado. Top it all off with
Guyana (Cult Of The Damned), a tribute to the good reverend Jim and
a few hundred dead chosen ones, and you've got one appalling, harrowing
trip down Manowar's Nordic coastline in the sky. Perhaps more frenetic
and thrashy than its confident predecessor, Sign Of The Hammer is
nevertheless a power-hungry feast on which to gorge, a journey on
which the music nor the lyrics can be taken seriously on their own,
only the resulting death tones of their fused attack. Truly a panic
of a record for whatever reason.

Rating  8

Manowar - Fighting The World
(Atco '87)
Having been pasted to the wall by Manowar live and in concert, I now
can begin to understand the dismally unjust reasons for the band's
lack of commercial glory, for fact is, the band's fanbase has been
systematically driven to deafness by the unholy wrenching of cavernous
howling that is Manowar in the flesh. Yea and verily, mine interest
might have waned in these later lean years, were it not for the insane
conviction of the band's on and off stage dedication to annihilation.
Fighting The World, although largely <169>unheard<170> if you get
my drift, is a fine pageant of ageless lore, a feast of godly strength,
recalling the band's finest fistfuls of rage. That tell-tale Manowar
sound has been brilliantly fine-aged 'til it rumbles and destroys
with more grating fear than henceforth willed, still encrusted with
the distorted gutturals of Joey Demaio's bass and Scott Columbus'
killer percussive machinations. All of side one is thunderously perfect
Manowar, offering one half glory-bound anthems, one half metal-encased
statements of war. Side two upholds the band's brave tradition of
epic, lumbering into being with the previously released, Orson Welles-narrated
Defender, then the Valhalla-entombed dynamics of Holy War, which comes
as a bit of a ponderous lull compared to merciless closer Black Wind,
Fire and Steel, a characteristic explosion of speed done in typical
Manowar disdain for the weak, chafing with raw collisions of bass
and vocal will from the supreme and unwielding Eric Adams. After the
smoke melts, what hath just occurred is another characteristically
muscular offering, one side fully great, one side, sprawling and maybe
1/3 or 1/2 as direct as one might want, spending much time strenuously
re-establishing the <169>Death To False Metal<170> doctrine and accompanying
fur-lined image already labouriously and relentlessly enforced at
every lull in the violence. However, despite such sermons which we've
grown to love and live for, Manowar is the reigning human bullet of
uncompromise, no question. Long live.

Rating  9


Manowar - Kings Of Metal
(Atlantic '88)
Deeming this band a parody is a futile pursuit in infinite ironic
layering, for Manowar is a philosophy of inter-connecting unbelievables
that just disintegrates into mass ludicrousness under too serious
scrutiny. Having said that, Kings Of Metal comes along and for once,
this band that finds, record after record, impressive and bludgeoning
terrain while unrepentantly repeating itself, finally begins to stumble
over its past, curmudgeoning itself into a dim reflection of the spiel
it until now pulled off with impressive weight and authority. Not
that Kings Of Metal is a waste of space, but it most definitely is
chock full of traditional but usually limited Manowar flaws such as
bad thrash, lots of silly instrumental interludes, slow, boring sections,
extravagant arrangements, and above all one of the poorer mixes in
years, something known on the back cover as <169>full digital recording<170>
which more or less exposes the band's sonic holes, here sounding all
clattering and noisy, little in the way of full range or bottom end
muscle. And only now, do the lyrics echo with empty threats. High
points: the dramatic and tuneful Kingdom Come and the OTT cheeze of
Hail And Kill. All in all, merely a low calibre collection of songs,
blown away at the knees by one uninviting and clanky mix.

Rating  6

Manowar - The Triumph Of Steel
(Atlantic '92)
Manowar's return despite humbling (never!), almost mortal (never!)
trials and tribulations embraces the CD age with one endless epic
tale about, you guessed it, muscle-beaches with swords, unassumingly
deemed Achilles, Agony And Ecstacy In Eight Parts, which at 28:37
is destined to throw in every Manowar excess ever mustered under the
flag of megaton mastery. Builds, ebbs, flows, mini-songs, ravings,
mini-suites and an awe-inspiring, quintessentially metallic drum solo
(plus cymbal solo intro) from new boot Rhino, all combine to cut a
landscape that is the ultimate Manowar profile, for better and worse;
gut-turning textures but, well, long. Anyhow, strapped on the back
end, we get no less than seven more caterwauls, all pressing the band
to even further extremes; extremes of speed, anger, sloth, quiet seclusion,
noise, panic, experimentation, sound effects, solo frenetics and production
fanaticism, which is damn near equal to the band's insane live mix.
New drummer Rhino and new axeman David Shankle are forces to behold
out of necessity, as they assume their respective thrones in a band
that manages to showcase everybody all the time. Without a doubt,
the most lavish, psychologically forceful Manowar project yet; to
use a volatile term, progressive, as the men on the mount define their
world in intense vividness within and away from their music towards
aural narrative (Orson, can you hear us?). Big, blinding and overblown
(not to mention six more "of" songs), The Triumph Of Steel
is unswerving ambition filling the confines of the long established
Manowar world of ancient heroics. Whether it spills into your world
is a question of personal taste. In my world, Manowar now goes even
further beyond discussion of good vs. bad metal, into one of mental
landscaping, as I seem to become less concerned with counting good
riffs and choruses, more blasted by the welded vibes.

Rating  9

(Reprinted From Riff Kills Man!: 25 Years Of Recorded Hard Rock &
Heavy Metal. 1,942 record reviews spanning the years 1968-1993, 445
pages, $20 including tax and shipping from Power Chord Press, P.O.
Box 65208, 358 Danforth Ave., Toronto, Ontario, M4K 3Z2. Note: Mention
you saw this in BOC-1, and receive free, 575 reviews written since
the book was published.)

Martin Popoff: martinp at inforamp.net
Power Chord Press (Riff Kills Man!)
P.O. Box 65208, 358 Danforth Ave.
Toronto, Ontario M4K 3Z2