The Batlord

The Triumph of Steel (1992)

Alright, I'm kinda drunk and back listening to Manowar, so let's do this...

1. Achilles, Agony and Ecstasy in Eight Parts - 28:37: Holy ****, why? I've hated this song ever since the first time I heard it. Manowar are a trashy-as-**** band, and attempting a 30-minute "epic" is just so laughable that it's not even almost Spinal Tap-ish. It's just straight-up Spinal Tap. ****, even Spinal Tap would never attempt such an obviously ****ing terrible idea.

I know it will just degenerate into arbitrary solos from every member of the band that will just be a series of arbitrary sections, awkwardly welded together in a self-indulgent display of uber-metal excess. I'd love it if it weren't thirty minutes of ear pain. I'm going to review the rest of the album normally, but this one song I'm going to do all by itself, since it's album-length. God help me I hate this song.

One minute in, and after an intro it kicks off with a pretty-decent-but-far-from-brilliant riff. If this was a normal-length song, I'd say it was probably going to be good filler, but I know otherwise, so...

Man, three minutes in and it feels like a heavily mediocre song has just flown by without accomplishing anything, but now we drift into some melodic, almost ambient... keyboards? I don't know. But it's boring, and Eric Adams's vocals have never sounded so silly. That might not be true, since this is Manowar, but on this song, it is what it is.

I didn't know this, but this was the first album without Ross the Boss on guitar. I don't know how much he contributed to songwriting, but considering Manowar's decent into relative mediocrity after Kings of Metal, I have to assume he was a major part of the band. In the SEVENTH MINUTE, new guitarist David Shenkle (in his only appearance on record) plays a solo which sounds like he might as well have been playing the American National Anthem. It's boring, it's pointless, and it... I can't say it kills the momentum of the song, since it never had any, but it's the lowest point so far.

And now we have a drum solo... ****, nine minutes in? And of course, it's pointless and self-indulgent. There's nothing to enjoy about this. It's just listening to some guy bang on his kit. Nine minutes in, and the song hasn't even been interrupted by pointless wank. It's not even wank, since wank implies some kind of skill, whereas this is just a bunch of guys jumping the shark so atmospherically that I'd be surprised if they didn't require space suits just to survive.

Escape velocity has officially been reached.

Twelve minutes in and the drum solo is still ongoing, but now with some boring guitar to back it up. Guitar is now gone, and the drums are trying to do something martial, I guess to be all Trojan War and ****... and where the **** did that flute come from? I'm so indifferent to this piece of crap that I didn't even remember there was a flute.

And now Eric Adams is talk/whispering in order to sound epic, but it just comes across as... well, Great Whites are glancing into the sky in befuddlement.

Fifteen minutes in and it's not even dragging, since it leaves so little of an impression that I can't even be bothered to immerse myself in it. **** off with this ****, Manowar.

Around 16:30 they just totally ripped off that riff when Metallica's "Battery" switches from acoustic (or whatever) into thrash. If I wasn't actively trying to listen to this I probably wouldn't even have noticed, so boring is this song.

I guess this is a more traditionally metal part of the song, since the whole band is playing, and Eric Adams is singing, but the quality of what's going on is basically so unimpressive that it may as well have been on Gods of War. WTF, Manowar? WTF?

And there, around the twenty minute mark, is the dull bass solo that I've been waiting for. Joey DeMaio is famous for his pointless bass solos, and this is no less awful than anything from previous albums, and is possibly even worse since it's so laidback... cause epicness?

**** this ****. I'm going for a piss and a smoke.

I'm back. So where are we now? The twenty-five-minute mark, and another generic Manowar song has been stuffed inbetween the pointless solos. Not once have I been engaged by this track. I've only ever managed to make it through the whole thing a few times, but never has my initial impression been changed.

This song ****ing blows. Just... blows. Two-and-a-half-minutes left. Just end already, so I can review the actual album.

And just in case you needed further evidence that the band had no idea how to write a thirty-minute epic, the song just fades out rather than actually ending. Not even any kind of resolution, just fading into nothingness, exactly how it began. This is seriously one of the lowest points of the band's entire catalog. And that's ****ing saying something.


As to the rest of the album (you may as well just treat it as two records lumped together)...


It almost saves The Triumph of Steel. If it weren't for the absurdity of "Achilles" turning this album into a mutant beast all its own, I'd say it was the transitional album between the doofy awesomeness of Kings of Metal and the middle-of-the-road decentness of Louder than Hell. It basically copies the anthemic, occasionally epic-in-the-style-of-early-Manowar-style of the former, while exhibiting the lack of inspiration which turned the former into just another Manowar album.

There are some truly cool songs on here -- most notably the meathead glory of "Metal Warriors" -- but others are bogged down by overlong intros -- most notably the unintentionally quasi-racist, Native American mumbling of the first minute-and-a-half of "Spirit Horse of the Cherokee", an otherwise awesome track -- or just a lack of proper editing, resulting in unfocused songs which attempt, but fail to recapture the epic atmosphere of Into Glory Ride and Hail to England.

The ass-end of The Triumph of Steel has no truly bad songs (though also almost no good riffs), but also pretty much no songs that can compete with the best of their previous releases. To be honest though, if you attempt to listen to this record front to back it can be an endurance test due to "Achilles", but if you're like me (and you ****ing should be) then you can just pretend that the album starts with "Metal Warriors" and be left with a highly decent album that succeeds at nothing about as much as it fails at nothing.

I think the band had blown much of their load with their first three albums, started treading water with Sign of the Hammer and Fighting the World, unexpectedly regained their passion and came out swinging hard with Kings of Metal, but had again lost inspiration with The Triumph of Steel. Perhaps a combination of desperation and egotism led them down the road to an ill-conceived and vomit-inducingly-executed "epic", whose scope left them with too little time to concentrate on the rest of the album. But a mediocre Manowar album is still pretty fun, and I'm a fiend, so I'll take what I can get.

I give this album a solid "meh".




Eh, **** it, you might as well... just to say you did.

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