The Batlord

People generally call this Manowar's sellout album, but I'm kind of dubious about that. They definitely watered their sound down to a large extent, basically deconstructing their sound back to Battle Hymns, but without any of the energy. But considering this was 1987, the time of hair metal, when Judas Priest was releasing Turbo, I find it odd that Manowar would sellout by playing early eighties trad metal while continuing to sing the exact same lyrics they had from day one.

It could very well be that their record company gave them a vague, uninterested decree to shape up or ship out, without even caring enough to foist a gestapo producer on them to write their album for them -- and that probably did happen -- but I suspect that they probably didn't fight it very much, if at all.

They'd showed signs of running out of creative steam on Sign of the Hammer, so I don't find it surprising that their next album would see them going the path of least resistance in a desperate bid to replace their lost inspiration with money (I probably would too).

The biggest sign of this is "Defender", the only song that sounds like the material on their three previous albums, and it really sounds like a castoff from Sign of the Hammer. It's heavy and epic, or at least it tries to be, but in the end it's just uninspired dullery. Even a heavier production probably wouldn't have saved it from being filler.

Most of the rest of the album is second and third rate Judas Priest-style trad metal without much to recommend. The first half of the album has some alright tunes, but generally nothing that sticks in your head after it's over. The second half is pretty much garbage (I don't know why people say that "Black Wind, Fire, and Steel" is that great, as it's just decent/good metal which just happens to be better than the crap before it.)

Honestly, the only song on this album that I'll ever be going back to is the title track. It's a straightforward metal song that could just have easily been recorded by Judas Priest or Saxon, but Eric Adams' bombastic, arrogant voice nails the **** out of it. It's anthemic and catchy in a way that just invades your brain and sets up a tent for days. It might be more of a backpeddle than an actual musical accomplishment, but it's too awesome for me to care.

So yeah, that's all that really needs to be said about Fighting the World. Perfectly ignorable album, but check out the title song if you're a true Manowarrior.





Oh yeah, this is a pretty bitchin' song too.

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