Manowar's "Battle Hymns"

Manowar skirts the line between Hard Rock and Heavy Metal on their first few albums, but I think their debut dips a bit too far past the threshold for being released in 1982. Even though they tout about playing Heavy Metal, most of the riffs are extremely rock-oriented, plus the vocals and drums are really lacking the power they have on their subsequent albums. The difference between this release and their 1983 album Into Glory Ride is night and day in my opinion, since I consider that release to be fully within the Heavy Metal genre. "Battle Hymn" and "Dark Avenger" are the only two songs on the album that make strong cases for themselves as possibly being Heavy Metal. I'd like to see this album labelled as Non-Metal (Hard Rock) and be removed from The Guardians. 

That's an interesting take Xephyr. We featured "Battle Hymns" on episode 11 of Metal Academy podcast which meant that we were required to pull the record apart & examine every nut & bolt before putting it all back together again so I ended up developing a pretty good understanding of my feelings on the album. After having a quick look at the tracklisting just now, I'd suggest that "Death Tone" & "Shell Shock" are nothing more than hard rock tunes. There's very little doubt about that. But, with the exception of the bass solo track "William's Tale",  I'd definitely class the rest of the album as being heavy metal with the B-side pretty much creating & defining the epic metal sound for all eternity. I don't have any qualms with "Battle Hymns" staying in The Guardians but it will be interesting to see what your fellow clan members think as I don't get a vote.

This release has been added to the Hall of Judgement.