Manowar - Warriors Of The World (2002)

Manowar. That heavy metal band that isn't really power, but I keep them on this blog anyway. This is their first album in six years, and it is quite bizarre, but oh so entertaining.
On the one hand, we have seemingly endless songs of war, battles, fighting and whatnot.  Some come at the beginning.  Then, out of nowhere, we have an adaption of  "Nessun Dorma", that song that television channels show Pavarotti singing whenever he's touring, making it sound like he never sung anything else.  And Eric Adams does a really good job of it!  It's not metalised to any great degree - it is symphonic, slow and majestic.
Not surprisingly, many metal fans despise it. As soon as I first heard this come on, I laughed and thought "oh, no wonder people give this band so much crap now." But I'm just a sucker for such things.
Then, a bit later, we have "An American Trilogy", a collection of American-as-apple-pie songs that Elvis used to perform. Once we come through all this, we get back to battles and all that, as well as a characteristic proclaimation of themselves ("Warriors Of The World United") and Satan stating his desire to fight against the forces of good ("House Of Death"). The word "die" is snarled so often in the latter part of the record, one might be in danger of just dropping dead on the spot.
I have never been a big Manowar fan, but I can go along with the fun if it's done well, and I think this is.  Warriors Of The World  is dumb, stupid and sometimes, in its overly-serious way, quite hysterical.
But it's also irresistible.

***1/2