Joey De Maio’s unbelievable bass gymnastics? Check. Relentless militaristic guitar riffs? Check. These arrogant, self-important bastards make all the bloated theatrical bullshit worth wading through by knocking out an anthemic, monstrous blast of good old fashioned heavy fucking metal with final track “Immortal”. It’s enough to make frustrated Mano-warriors hang up their rusty battleaxes and dented codpieces.īut then Manowar do what they’ve done for their entire pompous, pretentious, unintentionally self-parodic 40+ year career. And then there’s another Greek interlude called “Odysseus and Calypso - The Island of Ogygia”, which sounds ever so dramatic, but is still meaningless if you don’t speak the language. Yes, Eric Adams still has a great voice, as does Chiara Tricarico of Italian symphonic power metal band Moonlight Haze, but metal fans want to hear him belting out massive war anthems, not warbling away in limp pseudo-operatic insipidity. It segues into a power ballad duet (“Where Eagles Fly”) so sappy even Meatloaf would have been too ashamed to sing it. If you don’t speak the language you’re buggered without a translation. It sounds like a rehashing of “The Warriors Prayer”.

It follows into the clichéd stormy night and ominous horns of “Telemachus, Pt. Not particularly well on first appearances.įirst track “Athena’s Theme” is a quasi-operatic, over-dramatic intro”. “Achilles…” is a sprawling but flawed progressive power metal operetta, incorporating both bass and drum solos, and overblown theatrics. “Highlights from the Revenge of Odysseus” is supposedly a sample from the song.Īchilles was afforded the same treatment in 1992 in “Achilles, Agony and Ecstasy in Eight Parts” on the album “The Triumph of Steel”. There’s a song on it about the Greek hero Odysseus, which promises to be over 30 minutes long. Manowar are nearing the end of their musical career. OK, enough cliché and war themed metaphor. And at this stage, how many metal warriors still care? Manowar knows not and cares not, and on they soldier in the fight for metal! To unnecessarily answer a rhetorical question, fuck knows. The final swansong, Manowar’s Armageddon, the ultimate final confrontation approaches. There have been many times when the battle looked lost, but the Kings of Metal triumphed.

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