Manowar once pledged “if you don’t strap your nuts to your leg, they’re going to get blown off.” On their latest release, 2019’s The Final Battle I, it seems like the straps are now optional. The EP is inspired by the “legions of loyal Manowarriors” and they, like me, will find it enjoyable enough. It sounds great, the orchestral intro is quite stirring, Blood And Steel is the heroic pumper and Sword Of The Highlands is the elegiac (if overly Hobbit-y) ballad. Closing track You Shall Die Before I Die even turns the clock back to the band’s doomier early days. But there’s nothing here that hasn’t been done before, better. I’ll tap my feet and hum along but where’s the guts? Where’s the glory? Why are my unstrapped nuts still safely intact? This is supposedly the first EP of a trilogy. But two years on, there hasn’t been a follow-up and I’d hate this to be the last thing the Kings Of Metal put out. Come on Manowar! Stop preaching to the converted. Defy the naysayers, kill all the unbelievers. Give us part two and, this time, fucking go down fighting and take all the false metal with you. Blood! BLOOOOD!!
HEAVY METAL OVERLOAD 
That is a great opening line your review Scott. You should have taken credit for that. lol
Amazing that these guys are still at it even though the one guy is in the clink or I think he is..
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Yes he was out of the band before they did this. Good riddance.
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Does he sound a little like Dee Snider or am I hearing things?
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Hasn’t occurred to me but yeah maybe. They’re both New Yorkers so maybe that’s it. He used to remind me of Paul Stanley on the early stuff but not anymore.
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This sounds a lot like Judas Priest. I agree, Manowar are capable of better and being more original.
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Yep. Just seems phoned-in to me.
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That’s a very good term for it.
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I know they were once mighty but Blood & Steel sounds a bit like ‘Warriors of Genghis Khan’ by Bad News, marginally funnier maybe.
Surely this is a band that should go out sacrificing themselves in a heroic battle against warriors from another dimension? rather than just by not bothering to record another 2 EPs?
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The main difference is that Manowar aren’t poetical political like Bad News.
I think they’re probably too busy sacrificing themselves in other dimensions to record EPs. That’s the problem.
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For a band that was Fighting The World, what happened to em and to our nuts?
My cousin is a huge fan and he keeps telling me that the EPs are done. Why they aren’t released, who knows.
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I wonder if they might be waiting for proper touring to start again before releasing them. But they also said the Gods Of War album was going to be the first of a trilogy and that never happened either!
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Good point on the Gods Of War trilogy that wasn’t
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Yeah man, they need to bring it! We wanna break stuff! LET’S GOOOO!!! \m/ \m/
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YESSSS! Give ‘er!!
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That’s also what she said.
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