Gods of War Live

Back in 1997, Manowar released their first double live album, Hell On Wheels Live. Two years later, they released their second double live album, Hell On Stage Live. Hell On Wheels Live offered twenty three tracks while Hell On Stage Live only had sixteen. Both albums covered material from albums as early as Battle Hymns to ones as current as Louder Than Hell. Neither of the two live albums had the same two tracks, offering a good amount of live versions of songs that were never officially released on a Manowar album. It's been almost eight years since the last two live Manowar albums and 2007 now brings us Gods of War Live, which was recently recorded during Manowar's recent Demons, Dragons and Warriors Tour 2007. Gods of War Live is a double live album containing a total of twenty-two tracks. It comes in a fold out digipak with a booklet full of pictures and credits. Disc one mixes in some earlier classics like the band's flag ship theme song Manowar, the battle charged Each Dawn I Die and the epic Mountains with more recent tracks like the rallying cry Call To Arms and heavy metal anthems such as Die For Metal and Warriors of the World. Disc two is an encore performance consisting mostly of tracks taken from their latest studio album, Gods of War. One of the first things I noticed when hearing the opening chords of track one on disc one is that the band is playing an octave or two lower; something that my ears have a hard time accepting because I'm so used to hearing the songs being played a certain way over the years. This is most noticeable on older material from the first four Manowar albums, songs like Manowar, Each Dawn I Die, Holy War, Gloves of Metal, Kings of Metal, Black Wind, Fire and Steel, Secret of Steel and Mountains. Over the years the pipes of Eric "Golden Voice" Adams have become somewhat rusted by the wear and tear his vocal style has left on him. Tuning the instruments down an octave or two makes it a little more attainable for Eric Adams to still hit some of the notes he could once sing effortlessly. When it comes to his trademark falsetto screams, Eric Adams can still belt them out like the days of old. But he seems to use more of a grunting, almost snarl like death metal vocal style when it comes to some of the lower register vocal ranges. At times he sounds like he is tired and out of breathe but still manages to make the songs respectable. Eric Adams plays it safe in a lot of areas and does not try to reproduce the vocals in the exact same way he originally sang on many of these songs. This kind of makes many of these live versions somewhat unique. He sounds pretty good on songs like Gloves of Metal, Secret of Steel and Mountains. With the exception of the last track, (The Crown and the Ring, which is an edited studio version that closes out the show), disc two concentrates entirely on material from the latest Manowar album, Gods of War. This part of the show is considered their encore performance. The band only performs seven out of the sixteen tracks from that album. Being Gods of War is a concept album, I feel that the songs and the story line would have flowed much better had the entire album been performed from start to finish. However, Gods of War is almost seventy five minutes in length. It would have probably been very tough for Manowar to do the whole thing live due to time constraints and without having to sacrifice performances of some crowd favorites. Also, Gods of War plays out like something out of a Lord of the Rings movie, something that fans of older Manowar material have a hard time accepting. I can picture these fans being bored to death or even falling asleep during some of the segments within the concept. At least the fans get a small live sampling of the Gods of War material, just enough to get the point across. Also, the live versions of these songs are very close, if not dead on to the ones on the studio album, something Manowar have never really tried to reproduce. They do use a lot of prerecorded parts like spoken dialogue and many of the orchestrations are either samples played back on sequencers or prerecorded tapes. There is also a live bonus video of the song Gods of War. As for the over all recordings, they are nothing short of outstanding, probably the best live Manowar recordings to date. The production is clear, bombastic and surely crankable. The drums of Scott Columbus are heavy and pounding with a lot of bottom end. The rhythm guitars of Karl Logan have a clear crisp buzz to them and the metallic clangy bass of Joey DeMaio manages to provide a seamless complimentary rhythm role when Karl Logan goes into his shredding guitar lead solos. Supposedly Manowar performed in front of its largest audiences ever during this tour. The crowd is definitely into the performances, participating as an army of voices during songs like Call To Arms, Holy War, Die For Metal and Kings of Metal. Gods of War Live is a testament to Manowar's longevity as one of the best live heavy metal acts out there. This double disc set will make a nice addition to anyone's Manowar catalog.