Admit it, you never wanted the 80's to go away, you liked the plethora of power metal, cheese metal, and glam. Manowar comes back for yet another 80's style power metal album, complete with the cheesy 80's lyrics. Manowar at some point became required listening for any true metalhead, and why not, the band, through lyrics and otherwise, promotes the harmony of the "Brothers of Metal", and the great powers of the aforementioned genre. No, but Manowar isn't stuck in the past, they even say so in this recording. At least all their preachings are delivered with some fairly decent music. Somewhat heavy with a mid-paced tempo, the simple music is what help make this music so accessible to such a large audience. As always this music is guitar driven, the bass and drums are only there to provide some continuous substance to the lead. Often the case with the older style of power metal, and not escaped even by Manowar, is that portions of songs drift away into monotony with little change and nothing extremely clever. Normally Manowar is quick to recover from this pit and jump into a chorus or the other requisite of the genre: the solo. Manowar makes sure you know they know what a solo is, the solos are at many places on this album, often a solo somehow becomes the lead of a chorus. Just to make sure you recognize the value of a solo, one near the end of album just goes on forever, I never actually timed it, but I'm guessing at least two or three minutes. Completing the retro-80's feel is the piano introduced ballad "Courage". "Louder Than Hell" is another entry into a genre long since past. Make no mistake though, this is an excellent album, but it offers no originality and no uniqeness, it is straight from the 80's with close to zero elements from the modern genre of power metal. After hearing Manowar's perfected performance of this music, you may wonder why it is so unpopular now...
Back To Index