The Power of Thy Sword by Manowar
A musical detour into the world of Manowar, a fantasy inspired metal band that made a huge impact for me in the early `90's.
Welcome to Notebooks & Nonsense
From me to you:
Perfectly imperfect notes from the coffee-stained pages of my well-loved notebooks.
“If you’re not into metal… you are not my friend.”
Ok, not really. I listen to all kinds of stuff in addition to metal so we can still be friends no matter what you listen to.
But this week I’ve been enjoying a revisit to a song, and an album, that brought me back to about 9th grade, as I was firmly in my peak heavy metal listening phase.
It might be a little over the top, a little cheesy at times, but damn the drumming was great and the music still gets me pumped up and motivated.
Manowarriors unite, we’re taking a look at The Power of Thy Sword from their 1992 album The Triumph of Steel.
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I could spend a thousand words going over the history of this band, how it might be the only heavy metal band to have an academic paper feature their song as a basis for its study over in Italy, how the band sounds like epic Viking Metal but is actually from Albany, NY, how this album featured the thunderous drumming of a guy known as “Rhino” (Kenny Earl “Rhino” Edwards to be specific), or how the first song — a 28+ minute epic covering events of the Iliad by Homer — featured not only concept album level storytelling but a killer drum and guitar solo.
I could also go into detail of how crazy it is that in 1984, the band was included in the Guinness Book of World Records for delivering the loudest performance, a record which they have since broken on two occasions.[2] They also hold the world record for the longest heavy metal concert after playing for five hours and 1 minute in Bulgaria (at Kavarna Rock Fest) in 2008.[3][4]. Thank you for that nugget Wikipedia.
Instead, I want to talk about my introduction, and subsequent enjoyment, of Manowar entering my life.
The year was 1993, probably.
I was fully into my Metallica/Megadeth heavy metal phase and was hopelessly devoted to sitting behind my drum kit for three hours every day, banging away as I attempted to teach myself to play along with album after album of some of the biggest metal of the era.
My poor parents.
I was a freshman in high school and one of my best friends(and fellow drummers) were both enjoying the benefits of his older brother and his friends also being massively into the metal scene.
They introduced us to tons of great music.
It helped that we had a group of four or five of us total that were all drummers, so we would hang out together and geek out over all of this amazing music.
This was also a time when I had fully embraced my love of fantasy books, having read Tolkien with The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, then moving on to discover the worlds of Shannara with Terry Brooks, The Belgariad and The Mallorean series from David Eddings, The Icewind Dale trilogy and The Dark Elf trilogy by R.A. Salvatore, The Dragonlance series by Weis and Hickman was well underway, and even the first five books of The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan.
And I wasn’t alone in this love.
The same best friend was also a huge fan so at any given time you could find us hanging out geeking out over music, books, or sports.
Around this time we were given a homework project in our Civics class that would find us needing to put together a project featuring what we deemed a utopian city.
Of course we procrastinated plenty, but when push came to shove we got things done via a few of the ultra rare school day sleep-overs.
I don’t remember all the details of our utopia, but I remember it featuring a lot of drum friendly, fantasy book, heavy metal references. We thought it was the perfect city — then probably got laughed at some in class by our classmates who just knew we’d do something like this.
As we worked, we had music cranked and one of the albums we had on repeat was this very album — The Triumph of Steel by Manowar.
These are fond memories as I found, for the first time, the joy of an album feeling tailor made to encompass not only my love of metal music. The crazy drumming, soaring vocals, and maximum riffage with screaming guitar solos, but also my love of fantasy books.
Even with the massive 28+ minute long story of Achilles, Agony and Ecstasy in Eight Parts leading the way, the rest of the album felt like a collection of fantasy short stories.
Check out this track listing, it just OOZES heavy metal fantasy.
Metal Warriors became our heavy metal mantra and would deliver us the first line of this letter, “If you’re not into metal…you are not my friend”.
Ride the Dragon punches you in the face with a wall of drums and the wailing of guitars that sound like dragons roaring as it tells the story of being a dragon rider with the line “We must die to be reborn” echoing through the chorus.
Spirit Horse of the Cherokee slows things down with a heavy groove telling the story of the Native Americans welcoming the white man only to be slaughtered and conquered but they weren’t going down without a fight. This one always felt a little more real, especially when the line hits saying “Our trail of tears would end… one day at Wounded Knee.”
Burning gives us a dark fantasy vision of hell with another chunky, mid-tempo groove and the almost chant-like feel of lines like “At the end of the breaking I'll be watching you die.”
The Demon’s Whip always felt like a heavy metal version of the story of The Nazgul from Lord of the Rings, without actually directly copying Tolkien. This of course is another of the sweet spot, mid-tempo, heavy groove until speeding up towards the end. It’s no wonder people thought this music was evil, this songs lyrics read like some kind of satanic cult chant, including the line “To heal the unrepentant, one needs a greater sin”.
Master of the Wind ends the album as a soaring power ballad that always felt like the elves leaving Middle Earth to sail to Valinor. It’s an oddly uplifting feeling hug at the end of a fairly badass and menacing tour de force. This chorus though: “Fly away to a rainbow in the sky
Gold is at the end for each of us to find
There, the road begins where another one will end
Here, the four winds know
Who will break and who will bend
All to be the master of the wind”
That leaves just one track to talk about, sitting right between Burning and The Demon’s Whip is the song The Power of Thy Sword.
If, by now, you aren’t fully sold on the idea of this being an album inspired by epic fantasy, this track brings it home.
From the sounds of swords being drawn, the swelling of voices as the intro kicks into the story of a brutal and triumphant warrior whose only purpose is to draw his sword, enter battles in a near berserker frenzy and either emerge victorious or die a glorious death.
It feels like the Valhalla.
Lord of battle I pray on bended knee
Conquest by the rising sun
I'll wait for thy command with flame and blood at hand
Glory and a broken sword
I'm the master of the world I have no fear of man or beast
Born inside the soul of the world
Riding hard, breaking bone with steel and stone
Eternal might I was born to wield
Let us drink to the battles we've lived and we've fought
Celebrate the pain and havoc we have wrought
Great heroes charge into the fight
From the north to the south in the black of night
The clash of honor calls to stand when others fall
Gods of war feel the power of my sword
This song takes us up and down, huge drum blasts, soaring vocals, screaming guitars, more swords being drawn and clashing in battle, fast and slow, a quiet bridge before an epic conclusion as the warrior rides off to what might well be his final battle in which, win or lose, they will know the power of my sword.
I can see Aragorn, Walker Boh, or Drizz’t charging into battle with this ringing in their ears.
The Scribbled Margins : Music Edition
This week’s soundtrack:
The Power of Thy Sword by Tool. From the album The Triumph of Steel(1992)A line I loved:
There is blood in my hands there is blood in my eyes
With blood in my voice I scream as you die
I realize this sort of music isn’t for everyone, but as a 15 year old metal fan — this line was nothing short of full badassery on display. While I’m now in my mid-40’s and no longer have quite the same relationship to the bad ass vibes of this music and can understand the somewhat cheese factor of the lyrics, this song(and this line) still gets me pumped up and motivated enough to at least think I could run through a brick wall. It was prime, pre-football game, pre-during-post workout, music for me all through high school.Something I’m curious about:
I know Manowar is influenced by the fantasy and mythology genres, I’d love to know more about what specific books and stories they love. Maybe I can find some interviews talking about it.Extras:
Even though I loved the Triumph of Steel album, I never really listened to a ton of their other albums. With the exception of The Warriors Prayer from their 1988 album The Kings of Metal. It was like a darker, heavier version of The Princess Bride in which a child asks his grandfather to tell him a story and the grandfather proceeds to tell him the brutal story of the of the arrival of the four riders and their undead armies when the grandfather was just a boy. Who were they? Why, The Metal Kings and their armies of course. It’s not so much of a song, instead it plays like today’s immersive audiobooks, and it’s so good.For a fun look into the world of drummer Rhino talking about his career and his time with Manowar, this is a fun interview.
Whenever I hit play on this album I’m reminded of those days spent in that basement as we worked on our utopian city project. Music blasting, geeking out about the fantasy books we were reading at the time, and my first introduction to the semi-short lived drink Yo-J.
Do you remember Yo-J?
All I know is that I could be wrong about this as I couldn’t find much online about it, but I seem to remember a Peach flavor from those basement days that was delicious.
It’s been years since I’ve had it as they’ve discontinued the product, but the last time I had it sort of fell flat. It was still good, but not THAT good, and since I was by then in my 20’s I was much more aware of how some foods sat after eating/drinking them — this left me uncomfortably full feeling.
As if I had just ingested a hefty dose of expanding spray foam.
But in `93, in that basement with Manowar blasting and a Civics project being completed, it was sublime.
We were introduced to this band and this album by that friends older brother and if I’m being honest, the main reason I bought my own copy of that original cassette was because within that epic 28+ minute long song that opens the album (Achilles, Agony & Ecstasy in Eight Parts) there is a roughly 5 minute drum solo from Rhino that I fell in love with.
It made up all of Part IV : Armor of the Gods.
I’d spend years trying to learn it, was able to successfully pull of parts of it for a long time, but never could get my feet to move as fast and consistent as Rhino could.
Over my junior and senior years of high school I would incorporate the structure of this drum solo into nearly all of my drum solo’s I was given in our high school jazz band.
Starting out with some lighter cymbal/hi-hat play, adding in some snare and tom work, before going all in and doing my best to work as fast as I could while still staying rhythmic and musical in a jazz band setting.
My band director loved it and had me play solos all the time randomly. He’d tell me ahead of time, prior to any show, concert, or even pep band performance that he’d point to me at some point during a random song to let me(and the rest of the band) know that he wanted me to solo, and at the next phrase ending of whatever song we were playing I would begin.
The rule was that I kept soloing until he pointed to me again, at which point I’d have just a few bars to wrap up the solo and lead the band back into whatever song we were playing at whatever point we left it.
I’m no superstar and this WAS just high school, but I must have been doing alright because he had me do this in almost every single performance our band had, no matter how big or small or where we were.
This drum solo, along with Neil Peart’s famous solo abilities, were staples in my approach to drumming.
However, to this day, I still consider myself to be a better groove/pocket drummer than I am a flashy soloist.
Anyways.
The guitar solo is pretty epic in this song as well, but honestly there are parts that sound so shrill or buzzy that it can kind of annoy me, so I’d find myself just turning that volume down a bit until it was over.
I know there’s a high probability you might be reading this, rolling your eyes at the cheesy late 80’s/early 90’s epic metal feel and the soaring vocals with their geeky fantasy/mythology laden themes.
Even their look will likely garner a few laughs:
Maybe it’s one of those “this music hit me at the right time” situations, and the fondness stuck all these years later so now I only see it through the rose colored glasses of nostalgia.
But I love it all the same.
I’ll leave you with this quote from a 2007 MTV Interview with Manowar bassist Joey DeMaio who had this to say about their 2007 release, Gods of War:
"It will fry the hair on your balls," DeMaio said, without a hint of irony. "These days, there's a real lack of big, epic metal that is drenched with crushing guitars and choirs and orchestras. So it's nice to be one of the few bands that's actually doing that."
You can check out the full interview here via the wayback machine.
If you would like to hear my thoughts on anything in particular just leave it in a comment or drop a line via email! I’d love to hear your thoughts about this song, this band, or even just your thoughts on these musical detours I’ve been making!
Take care of yourself and keep scribbling!
Dave
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