After a bit of lyrical posturing about "I laugh as I die" and "Kill without warning/ For blood now I lust" they swagger into a chorus that does indeed weld Sabbath heaviness to Wagnerian bombast, complete with namechecks for Asgard and the Valkyrie, who "carry the dead/ Where the blood of my enemies lies". Then, 30 seconds in, it erupts into a galloping riff underpinned by the pummelling drums of Scott Columbus (who sadly died earlier this year), while Eric Adams bellows, without any sign of self-knowing parody: "Three sons have I and they ride by my side/ The Fierce, The Black and The Wicked are their names," which, I suppose, is no more ridiculous than anything Jamie Oliver has called his children. As with many mid-80s metal bands that saw themselves as in some way extreme yet didn't want to reach their terminal velocity within eight seconds (cf Metallica, Helloween, and more bizarrely Accept … the list goes on), they start deceptively quietly, Ross the Boss's gently plucked guitar lulling the unsuspecting listener who hadn't heeded the clearly lit warning signs into a false sense of security. It thrilled me as a teen, and when my iPod chucks it my way, it still thrills me now. It was released in 1984, the same year as This Is Spinal Tap, although I'm prepared to admit that might be coincidence. (There's a fair amount of utter cack in their back catalogue, too, such as Black Arrows, in which bassist Joy Demaio intones by way of intro: "Let each note I now play be a black arrow of death sent straight to the hearts of all those who play false metal" before embarking on an insanely fast bass solo without anything approaching a tune, or a single redeeming feature.)īlood of My Enemies, the opening track on their third album, Hail to England, was one of those moments when it all came together perfectly. Yet despite their myriad foolishnesses, every so often they'd manage, presumably by mistake, to deliver a genuinely brilliant song, such as March for Revenge (By the Soldiers of Death) or band mission statement All Men Play on Ten. So far, so testosterone-drenched bozo-metal. The phrase "death to false metal" became their rallying cry, although they seemed reluctant to live their values, as the false metal likes of Ted Nugent and Mercyful Fate toured with them and survived to tell the tale. Everything else – from Shakatak to Metallica, and all points between – was false metal. Indeed, when asked what false metal was in one interview, they boldly stated the only exponents of true metal were Black Sabbath, themselves and the original riffmeister, Richard Wagner. Not content with such pantomime buffoonery, they also had an ideology to promote, namely that the world was being overwhelmed by the forces of " false metal", essentially the nascent hair-metal scene.
For all I knew, they even dressed like that when they nipped out to buy pints of milk or return overdue library books.įollowing in the footsteps of Kiss, who mixed their own blood with the printers' ink used in production of the Marvel Comic detailing their superhero adventures, they took the highly unorthodox step of publicly self-harming to sign their Music for Nations record contract, bringing along a fancy dagger with which to stab their arms in the name of metal in front of baffled photographers. They took the cartoonish element of metal one step further than anybody else either dared or thought sensible, painting themselves as heroic warriors from Norse mythology and taking to dressing in loincloths and brandishing swords on stage and in photoshoots, even in subzero New York winters. Even as an impressionable, not very discerning 15-year-old determined to buy every heavy metal album that had ever been released, I knew Manowar were fairly ridiculous, and professing any interest in them was probably not a fast-track route to success with the opposite sex.