lukretion
Hate them or love them, Manowar are one of the most well-known (and talked about) metal bands on the planet. Warriors of the World is the Americans’ 9th full-length album, released in 2002 after a gap of 6 years from their previous LP, Lounder Than Hell. And if that record had already started to show a worrying involution in the band’s sound, Warriors of the World continues the inexorable decline, marking a new low in Manowar’s discography.
The band’s sound has not changed much over the years – forging that epic, loud brand of traditional heavy metal that has served as template for countless bands since the 1980s. While not very different from the rest of their discography, the tracks on Warriors of the World resemble more a faded photograph of Manowar’s sonic prototype than a 2.0 version propelled in the new millennium. The tracks have all the right ingredients – loud, steady drum beats, powerful bass and guitar riffs, epic vocal melodies -, but it is hard to shake the impression that we haven’t heard all this before already, but better. A ballad like “Swords in the Wind” pales in comparison to masterpieces such as “Master of the Wind” or “Heart of Steel”, lacking in pathos and delivery. The more uptempo and aggressive songs (“Hand of Doom”, “House of Death “, “Fight Until We Die”) fare somewhat better, but they too show the signs of time: Eric Adams’ roar, while still respectable, is just a tiny bit less commanding than on previous records; the guitar and bass riffs feel slightly recycled; and the arrangements are somewhat less vivid. In sum, it’s hard to see why one would prefer to listen to this over any of the band’s previous 8 records, if free to choose.
Of course, the fact Manowar might have written better songs and albums before, is no reason to consider Warriors of the World a bad record per se. However, it is hard to ignore some glaring issues it presents. First and foremost, the album contains a lot of fluff. And when I say “a lot”, I mean more than 50% of the material included here. This is mostly concentrated in the album’s first half, where we have two fairly insipid balladish songs (“The Fight for Freedom” and “Swords in the Wind”), two frankly improbable covers (a snippet of Puccini’s aria “Nessun Dorma” and Elvis Presley’s “An American Trilogy”) and two pointless, keyboard-driven instrumentals (“Valhalla” and “The March”). That’s a total of six slow, fairly pompous, slightly lethargic songs in a row! It would be enough to sink even the strongest of albums and, alas, the remaining five tracks of Warriors of the World fare just above average. The concluding lot of songs, from the title-track to “Fight Until We Die”, is by far the best the LP has to offer, although it’s hard to ignore the fact that “Hand of Doom”, “House of Death” and “Fight Until We Die” are essentially cut from the same cloth and have their own issues too (for instance, the ending chorus of “Hand of Doom” drags on way too long and “Fight Until We Die” really feels like a mere appendix to “House of Death”).
Overall, I cannot say I enjoy listening to Warriors of the World much. The first half is highly inconsistent and boring. The second half is better, but seems to have been written on autopilot, recycling familiar riffs and melodies (and lyrics, of course). Maybe Manowar should have tried to condense this material into an EP (with the covers + instrumental a b-sides, possibly). Either way, I cannot see myself playing this one very often, unless someone steals all previous Manowar’s albums from my collection.