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They may be as scorching as molten metal, but this album by Manowar continues to demonstrate (listen after listen) its own anonymity and uselessness. Released five years after the much-discussed Gods of War, and only five months after the digital version of this same album (the Hammer Edition, which was excellently discredited on this site), the physical format of The Lord of Steel emerges after the preamble of a false promise from the failed politician Joey DeMaio. In 2007, in fact, shortly after the release of Gods of War (a work conceptually tied to Norse myths), the American bassist declared to a hard rock/heavy metal magazine (the well-known Flash, which now seems to have closed its doors, at least for the Italian version) that the album was the first act of a trilogy based on European myths, to be followed by two more albums focused on Greek and Roman mythology. None of this happened, perhaps because part of the audience couldn't stand the pompous and "Wagnerian" symphonic arrangements that embellished the previous album. Precisely for this reason, The Lord of Steel returns to being genuinely metallic, as well as clearly mediocre.
To release an album like this, you have to be heroes. In the sense that it takes courage to market such a turkey of the kind. Bare-boned, sloppy, manneristic, and shamelessly opportunistic (to this last adjective, however, you can respond with a healthy general insurrection: don't buy it). The Lord of Steel presents itself as the younger brother of the tacky and mediocre Louder Than Hell, achieving a feat capable of surfacing the saddest shrubs of human scarcity: being even worse! And since a series of pitiful tracks wasn't enough to pour significant doses of emotional stress into the listener's eardrums, here even the production is duly marred: DeMaio, with his trusty walking bass, shoots his instrument at incredibly high volumes to constantly engage the listener in adjusting the bass on their stereo to avoid booking a test at the nearest audiology studio. But the real miracle is another: this bass, as annoying as a herd of pachyderms smothering the sounds of all acoustic speakers in the digital landscape with their buttocks, sometimes manages to overshadow every other instrument! Admittedly, the bass has always been very prominent in the group's other works, but in this case, peaks of exaggeration have been reached never touched before by a mere mortal, a choice governed only by Joey's sheer exhibitionism, rather than reasons of "sonic poetry" since the only track acquiring some charm with this audio is Born in a Grave, a dark and solemn mid-tempo with a demonic mood. However, this doesn't work with the other tracks, causing them to lose even more points; just listen to the opening title track to realize it, a song that, however, highlights Donnie Hamzik, who hadn't been in the studio with Manowar since the debut, a more articulate drummer compared to Scott Columbus (R.I.P.). The result, however, doesn't change: musically decent opener but sluggish and lacking that energy the group was able to unleash in the past. The same goes for Manowarriors, a song opened by a high note of Eric Adams, who in this album limits the high notes to sing more often with low and hoarse tones. Nevertheless, his performance remains, overall, good although the piece never takes off: a heavy gallop with an embarrassing text, a heavy ode to the band's fans, particularly all those fifteen-year-olds full of studs and pimples willing to shell out 100 euros to see their favorite band through binoculars. Good for them!
And the disaster doesn't end here! The fourth track is called Righteous Glory; a lifeless ballad that should be counted among the most uncoordinated pieces in the history of music, due to its lack of connection between composition and lyrics: an ode to Odinism made in a steel mill, practically. It almost seems like an unfinished fragment of Gods of War, added to this album as filler, as if the seven minutes of the massive and paced Black List weren't already boring enough, while Expendable and Annihilation remain two little songs following the sonic footsteps of this last suite, being captivating in rhythms but poor in content. The album proceeds towards the finale, with aKarl Logan who occasionally comes out into the open with some guitar solos granted by the magnanimity of the bass, which continues to overwhelmingly overshadow everything, while the speakers infuse the tragicomic notes of the penultimate Hail Kill and Die, a pretentious sonic recycling over which a self-celebratory text unfolds, treading the lands of the ridiculous. And to close this Final Edition, we have a piece as unpublished as it is useless: a The Kingdom of Steel that seems like a lullaby to dull the children before tucking them in.
Not all the pieces have been mentioned; however, what emerges in the lines above is enough to understand that it is an album good only for headbanging in company, or to be listened to in the background while doing something else. In listening to it, there is no need to employ deep concentration, precisely because depth is not there, nor is there any trace of the art of the distant past, as well as of the near present. No sign of the power and honor of The Triumph of Steel, nor of the sober refinement of Gods of War. Meanwhile, the glorious epic of the past lies in a lost land…and wants nothing to do with rising again.
Federico “Dragonstar” Passarella.
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