Every Manowar Song About Motorcycles Sucks
How I learned to love Manowar by pretending it's doom
Every Manowar song about motorcycles sucks. Battle Hymns's "Death Tone" sucks. Into Glory Ride's "Warlord" sucks. Kings of Metal's "Wheels of Fire" sucks.1 Worse, every one of those songs is the first track on its respective record. It's possible those songs are the only Manowar some people hear before deciding that Manowar is not for them. That sucks.
Naturally, your rejoinder might be, "Well, Manowar sucks." Wrong.2 Manowar rules. It's just that Manowar isn't meant to write peppy chuggers about motorcycles. It isn't even meant to be the world's loudest heavy metal band. No. Manowar is meant to be an epic doom band.
Fact: Manowar is good as hell at writing epic doom riffs. I didn't realize this for a long time because I, too, thought Manowar wasn't for me. Now, after taking this project on, Manowar's doomer energy is more elemental to me than earth, wind, fire, and steel. And Manowar's secret life as a sneaky good doomer makes sense given its oft-repeated origin story.3 From Wikipedia, emphasis mine:
Manowar's history began in 1980 when Joey DeMaio, the future bassist of the band met guitarist Ross the Boss while working as a bass tech and fireworks manager for Black Sabbath on the Heaven and Hell tour. Ross the Boss, a former member of the punk rock band the Dictators, was the guitar player in Black Sabbath's support band, Shakin' Street.4 The two bonded over their shared musical interests, became friends and decided to form a band with the suggestion and advice of Ronnie James Dio during the tour. At the end of the tour with Black Sabbath, the duo got together to form Manowar.
Black Sabbath begat Manowar. It's right there, clear as day. If not for Dio, fireworks, and a French band named after an MC5 song, would the warriors of the world have united? These are the questions that keep me up at night after drinking a pot of coffee at 9pm.
But let's get back to the doom. Similar to Twisted Sister, when Manowar knuckles down and writes a slow and low trudger, it gets it right more often than not. To me, that right is more right than Manowar's more famous power metal material. That right is way more right than its sucky songs about motorcycles. Fact: Manowar should be doom. It's right there, clear as day. And I don't think I'm alone here.
You know who else gets this right? Noted "epic heavy/doom metal" band Atlantean Kodex. You know where they get some of that rightness from? Run the quotes. Again, emphasis mine.
I’d consider us as a successor to the traditional '80s heavy metal bands with that certain epic and mythical edge to their sound and lyrics. You know, bands like early Manowar, Warlord, early Fates Warning, Manilla Road. But on the other hand, you can hear a lot of the drama the 1990s had to offer in our sound. Without bands like Bathory or Solstice (UK) we wouldn't even exist, I guess.
To Metal Squadron:
ATLANTEAN KODEX was formed by the end of 2005 by Kreuzer and me. We didn’t have much of plan besides jamming on some old Manowar and Bathory-riffs. We felt that after Quorthon died and Manowar went plastic, something was missing in today's metal. There was no band who followed the path these two bands laid out. So we had to do it ourselves.
To Metal Crypt:
Yes, absolutely! Like I said, originally the band was formed only for ourselves. A fun thing, you know, jamming on old Manowar riffs and Bathory tunes and getting lost in the nostalgia for the good old times. Just another excuse for getting drunk and making noise.
As a refresher, early Atlantean Kodex sounds like this:
Nailed it. That is extremely right.
So, if Manowar is supposed to be an extremely right epic doom band like Atlantean Kodex, but most of its better albums are marred by sucky songs about motorcycles, how could I, your humble metal idiot, fix that? The answer, of course, is by creating a streamlined 45-ish-minute playlist5 that will stand in as Manowar's lost epic doom album. It's time to make it right. Let's ride, ride, ride.
Side A:
1. "Secret of Steel"
Into Glory Ride is my favorite Manowar album by a long longsword. "Secret of Steel," the second song and therefore first real song on the record, demonstrates why. You can really hear the band channeling Dio-era Sabbath on this one, particularly "Over and Over." That opening riff is incandescent with Iommian intensity.6 Also, shout out to drummer Scott Columbus. What a kit-battering beast. Check out this fun fact buried within Manowar's Encyclopaedia Metallum page:
According to the band's official biography, Scott Columbus was such a ferocious drummer in his prime that normal drum sets would shatter by the end of a gig. This led to the use of custom stainless steel drum sets to avoid costly replacements for every show.
While we're snorting around the notes section like a truffle pig, here's the other prime morsel of myth-making:
When the band "inked" a deal with Megaforce Records in 1983 (Music for Nations in the UK), the contract was signed in their own blood to mark the occasion.
Death to false inks. Waterman and Paper Mate, leave the hall.
Anyway, great way to start an album. If only it did in real life.
2. "Dark Avenger"
As a flip on the construction of Manowar's debut LP, Battle Hymns, I'm sticking two epics up top.7 "Dark Avenger" opens with moody widdles by bassmaster Joey DeMaio that are sucked into a vortex and come out the other side transformed into an armor platted merc ready to wrassle. That riff. OOGH. Battle Hymns drummer Donnie Hamzik pounds out a good pocket. And then, in comes the characteristically charismatic vocals by Eric Adams, pure musical theater for people who like spears. So far, so good. So far, par for the course. Curveball: "Avenger"'s centerpiece is a "Stonehenge"-y spoken word part by future Transformer Orson Welles. You got the touch, Orson.8 Anyway, the track takes off in its second half, giddy-upping into a fine gallop. Reminder: Per Fenriz, orthodox doom needn't always be slow, a trait I'll extend to the epic strain.9
3. "Gates of Valhalla"
Another Into Glory Ride highlight. "Gates of Valhalla" is also my favorite Adams performance.
Valhalla the gods await me
Open wide thy gates embrace me
Great hall of the battle slain
With sword in hand.
Behold the kingdom of the kings
Books of spells and magic rings
Endless knowledge, endless time
I scream the final battle cry.
That looks like some D&D nonsense on the page, something a DM would fumble through when you roll a 20 and ask precisely what the bard is singing. But the nonsense becomes endlessly anthemic as soon as it exits Adams's throat. And crucially, the music matches him. The slow chug of a riff that falls perfectly between Columbus's set-destroying thumps is pretty much heavy metal incarnate. Classic. It'd be Manowar's catchiest song if the track that opens our lost epic doom album's B-side didn't exist.
Side B:
4. "Gloves of Metal"
Is "Gloves of Metal" doom? Debatable. At the time it was released, probably not, but there was also a time when Blitzkrieg was the fastest band on the planet. That is to say, nearly 40 years on, many newer trad doom songs now churn at this tempo. I mean, Solstice had no issue covering it. If Argus released a song at this speed, you'd just be like, "Oh, hey, an Argus song." More importantly, though, does "Gloves of Metal" rule? Yes. It rules.
A banger so real, righteous, and vibrant that even A.C. couldn't ruin it, "Gloves of Metal" is the Manowar song in my mind. It makes me want to run through a brick wall protecting a brick factory. This is all you need to know about my fair-weather, doom-specific fandom. Newer songs like "Odin" are, uh, fine. But I'll take "Gloves of Metal" over the more plastic-y power metal stuff all damn day.
"But is it doom, though???" Lemme stop you. I don't care. I wanted this album to be good, "Gloves of Metal" is great. It's on the album.
5. "Hatred"
"Hatred" is probably Manowar's doomiest song. Ross the Boss's air-raid siren riff is that uncut Sabbath good stuff. The lyrics? Not...the good stuff.
I crush your bones, I kill your face
I rip your flesh, I end the chase
You meet with terror, you draw the ace
I rule the world, the rats that race.
…what? "Hatred" is up there with Exodus's "Piranha" and Malice's "Godz of Thunder" as classic, English-as-a-first-language, heavy metal "what?"s. That said, after a few banshee screeches, you barely notice your face getting killed. That's an underappreciated Manowar power: Adams's vocals can launder dumb lyrics better than crypto can drug money.
6. "Battle Hymn"
The finale. The closer. The deal-sealer. I can think of no better choice.
"Battle Hymn" has a Judas Priest grandiosity to it, Manowar's "Victim of Changes," even. In a way, it might also be Manowar's prettiest song, with Ross the Boss's near-jangle strums acting like commas. Still, it's a muscular strutter, the alpha and omega of blade-wielding machismo.10 Like "Gloves of Metal," its doom creds are debatable: it's mostly slower by modern standards because this was the speed of heavy metal in 1981-82. I care not. What I do care about is that it fits my self-imposed LP time constraints. And working around constraints are how all great artistic decisions are made.
There we go. That's the epic doom album that will revive Manowar's reputation among haters, finally correcting the record and re-contextualizing the quartet. Six songs, two sides, 41 minutes. A new old doom classic. We'll name it...Epicus, Doomicus, Motorcycus.
Wow, this went perfectly. I did nothing wro-hold on.
Wolf….
Yes, omnipresent voice in my head that questions everything I do?
These songs are all from the first two albums.
And….
They're going to laugh at you, Wolf.
Fine. Fine. Here’s Son of Epicus, Doomicus, Motorcycus:
"Defender" (1983)
Wolf, you did it again. Another A+ playli-goddamn it, hold on.
Wolf….
Yes, voice? Did I leave the oven on? Do you want to endlessly replay some embarrassing thing I said 20 years ago?
Where is “Hail and Kill”?
Oh. Oh no. You’re one of them.
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
Originally published on PRMFH.
As pointed out in the comments on the original post, this song is supposedly about cars. However, I submit the following explanation: Isn't a car simply a double motorcycle? Makes you think.
Manowar is the most understood and thus least understood metal band on the planet. It's some real Kobayashi Maru stuff.
This is what I like to call "lazy sportswriter BS" because it assumes ability must be derived from some narratively important event. Imagine reading this with the soft-focus, "and then his pet elk died" soap-opera-ization that's endemic in mainstream American Olympics coverage.
Shakin' Street is not germane to our discussion, but it rules. Aesop Dekker wrote this about Shakin' Street's 1980 debut way back in...oh good god my knees exploded into dust...2009:
Every song on here is a gem, but I am partial to "Solid As A Rock" which could be the anthem at the triumphant end of an '80s teen sex comedy where a group of rag tag teenage misfits overcome their differences to beat those snobby rich kids in a boat race, or golf game, or whatever.
That said, the fact that Shakin' Street was on tour with Black Sabbath is hilarious. Who do you think Joe Public Sabbath Fan enjoyed less, Shakin' Street or Gentle Giant? Sabbath sometimes picked tour partners with the same attention to thematic detail as an Ohio promoter with a cousin in a pornogrind band.
Yes, it must be classic LP length. So, uh, maybe next time, "Achilles, Agony and Ecstasy in Eight Parts."
There's an additional blessing of a slight "Snowblind" feel that absolutely rules. More bands should call upon "Snowblind," a song that is impossible to screw up. It's the best System of a Down song. It's also the best of Converge's covers.
Battle Hymns's B-side is where the sneaky doom resides, and thus it's the superior side. However, Hymns's quicker, open-valve-rumbling A-side, "Death Tone" aside, is still decent. "Metal Daze" and "Shell Shock" could've been solid Deep Purple album cuts. It's fine. It's just not doom.
How many Academy Awards winners have an Encyclopaedia Metallum page? Wolf, look into this.
"Avenger" also sounds unreal in the two-spot on Hell on Stage Live, so that factored into my very educated and not at all arbitrarily decided sequencing.
It's hilarious that I like it, then.