The Triumph of Steel

I listened to "Triumph Of Steel" as a Christmas present to myself on Christmas day, 2018. Out of all the Manowar albums I have listened to, (from "Battle Hymns" to this one) "Triumph Of Steel" is bar none the best in all aspects. If someone asks why Manowar is considered power metal (and hasn't listened to the latter half of "Sign Of The Hammer" and "Fighting The World"), this album is why. So glorious and triumphant (and cheesy) it is.

Something very power metaly (yes, power metaly) Manowar did was do a double bass kick to 16th notes, hitting the snare on every beat with the guitar and bass trem picking to those 16th notes to whatever note played. It's kind of a power metal stereotype and a little generic but I thought it was a little interesting to see Manowar do that. My only criticism with their trem picking sections is to do more than just one note. I think they should have made a progression. There's a trem picking section that comes to mind from "Achilles, Agony And Ecstasy In Eight Parts" where they trem pick on the note 'B' (2nd fret, 5th string for you guitarists and to give you an idea of what pitch) and they hold this 'B' for quite a while and I just think they should have made more of a riff-type thing, use more notes, make a progression. The sound of this trem picking and bass pedaling sounded really good with Manowar's unmistakable sound.

One thing that amazes me about Manowar is their range of sound, instrument use, dynamics, and emotions. Their typical image is the loudest, toughest, greatest metal band around. Blazing technical skill, soaring vocals, shredding guitar solos, rumbling (and shredding) bass, thundering drums, all part of Manowar. But they also emphasize their classical influence and bring on these great orchestral parts either on its own or in the background in a slower part of a song. They use this a lot in "Achilles, Agony And Ecstasy In Eight Parts". They truly know how to work music and have these orchestral parts with strings, woodwinds, etc. and still have this bada** image. I would say this works because of classical music already being a key influence of metal.

One thing every Manowar fan knows is that this is the only Manowar album to have David Shankle, one of my guitar heroes and no doubt one of the greatest and fastest guitarists to ever live, on it. He does such an amazing job on this album and on everything after the masterpiece, "Achilles, Agony And Ecstasy In Eight Parts", absolutely steals the show. The reason why I say on everything after "Achilles, Agony And Ecstasy" is because the whole band steals the show in that song and I'll get to that next. But in every song he just nails it.

The masterpiece "Achilles, Agony And Ecstasy In Eight Parts" deserves a whole review itself. Speaking of orchestration, the guitar orchestra around the 5:02 mark where the guitar itself starts with a beautiful melody then adds other voices and by the 6:30 mark there are maybe 5 or 6 different voices making this huge melody with harmony and playing octaves and I kid you not, it nearly brought me to tears cause it was so awesome. I call it the guitar orchestra cause that's really how they used it. One of my favorite things about this song is that everything got a solo and everyone of those solos were very impressive. Drums got a solo, bass got a solo, and guitar got a solo. The drum solo used a lot of double bass pedaling and answered a lot of my questions about drumming. (I'm not a drummer but I have a huge appreciation for drummers.) The bass solo was later in the song, around the 17-18 minute mark and boy did Joey DeMaio make use of the time he had to solo. Some people who are non-metal fans or are tone deaf (like pop fans) might just hear a bunch of random chaos in the bass solo. I beg to differ. I could hear every note he played and I really loved the bass solo. I highly recommend anyone who wants to play bass this album and Manowar in general. I feel like there are a lot of bass players who want to do awesome stuff like what guitarists do but they don't get to because it can be hard to find out the techniques used by master bassists like Joey DeMaio, Felipe Andreoli, and Markus Grosskopf. If I must say, I have a higher appreciation for bass players than I do drummers. Anyways, the guitar solo for "Achilles, Agony And Ecstasy" came very last, around the end of the song. They did something just like what they did in "Wheels Of Fire" from "Kings Of Metal", this kind of trade-off, question-answer thing every 8 or so measures and it sounded like two guitarists doing it. So pretty much, imagine if David Shankle played "Wheels Of Fire".

In closing, this is definitely Manowar's most triumphant album up to that point. By far their most triumphant album especially from a musical/compositional standpoint. The loud, heavy and fast parts really put in a huge metal pride. The slow, orchestral parts are very beautiful and shows Manowar's range of sound and dynamics. I loved every song on this album, just one criticism: "Master Of The Wind" dragged on a bit, almost like it was forced to be written and they had to get it done. Still loved it overall and it was beautiful, just, it dragged a bit. Every musician on this album played to their absolute best, especially David Shankle, a criminally underrated guitarist. This would take some thought, but I would highly consider considering "The Triumph Of Steel" a power metal essential. No question however that I would recommend this to anyone looking to become a true metal warrior.