1 - b: Being able to appreciate the ART that resides in something like the Bible, yet not aligning with it ideologically, is a very refined skill. Would you say that…
Manowar plays metal’s metal, the impersonal human experience in a universe of action, obsessed with power and overcoming. The paintings here are over-human. We can see the settings, the haunts, painted for us in vivid color by the music, but these are always entirely centered on action, on human action.
Into Glory Ride is, for all intents and purposes, Manowar's first album. It showcases the power of this music in expression and structure, every minute dramatic and exciting.
In many ways, Monotheist is the album that should have followed To Mega Therion if we lived in a perfect world, in a world where we could change past errors, erase our frivolous missteps and focus completely on the eternal work at hand.
Upon reading the album’s title, and being acquainted with the previous one, To Mega Therion, we brace for a hellish adventure more harrowing and transforming.
Celtic Frost makes a strange breakthrough with To Mega Therion. For one, they are faithful to the developments in Morbid Tales that come right out of Hellhammer and impose a more coherent form on it.
While the music here is already streamlined as opposed to the jigsaw method of Hellhammer, chaotic energy still suffuses the way the instruments are played.
Unlike the so-called third wave of black metal, the mid-to-late-90s wave of black metal showcased underground metal music at its purest and most essential. Bands like Sammath, Old Wainds, Setharial,…