Manowar Lives by the Code of Heavy Metal

It's just after midnight on a chilly Saturday in early April, and the air in the sturdy old Convention Hall in Asbury Park, is thick with bad metal?it lingers, like a smell. Twenty bands have blasted across the main stage here at Metal Meltdown IV, and more than 40 have played on the other two stages today?plus the dozens that were here the day before. My ears have been pounded into putty, I'm tired of waiting through bands with names like Cryptameria and Pissing Razors, I'm tired of watching chubby guys perform in Peavey tank-tops, and the seat I have staked out for the last four hours is uncomfortably hot. But I'm not moving, nor is anyone else in the hall?Manowar has yet to play.

Manowar, Manowar, "Kings of Metal." Manowar, an amalgamation of the worst attributes of KISS, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Motörhead?the stiff, galloping beat, the stentorian anthems, the gothic imagery, the reduction of the art of songwriting into something resembling Saturday morning cartoons. Manowar, whose formulaic pop-metal has been surpassed even by Danzig, fer crissakes. Manowar, whose albums, showing men in black leather with greased pectorals and we're-squeezing-our-butt-cheeks-as-tight-as-possible expressions, could be mistaken for gay porn video box covers. Manowar, who seem to have difficulty writing songs that do not contain the word "metal" in the title?"Metal Daze," "Kings of Metal," "Gloves of Metal," "Brothers of Metal Part 1," "The Gods Made Heavy Metal," "Metal Warriors (Brothers of Metal Part 2)." Manowar, Manowar, who found one sound more than 20 years ago and have deliberately not changed, even a little bit. This is actually part of a self-imposed mandate never to betray their vision of "true" heavy metal. Maybe you've heard their slogan?"Death to False Metal!"

Manowar Manowar living on the road/When we're in town speakers explode/Now we don't attract wimps 'cause we're too loud/Just true metal people that's Manowar's crowd.

Ah, Manowar. Such a band could not be fictional?even Spinal Tap is not quite as perfect a spoof of heavy metal, a form that in three decades has changed and developed perhaps more than any other branch of rock 'n' roll, yet gets no respect. It has gone from bluesy minimalism to prog to virtuoso sideshow to bad-boy pop to vicious thrash to grunge to a hybrid with rap, with all kinds of underground trends bubbling through it all the time. What other pop form has gone through so many changes? Not punk, not r&b, not country, not reggae, not funk, not even Top 40. Even hiphop?just a decade younger than metal?still basically sounds the same as it did at its inception. Metal, perhaps by virtue of its perceived lack of intelligence, has been uncommonly malleable. In the hands of the smartest and most creative musicians over the years?like Slayer, Metallica, Ministry, Helmet and the Melvins, to name a few?metal has been a source of incredible innovation; for others, it's basically loud bubblegum. Guess where Manowar stands.

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Manowar began, fittingly enough, during a low point in Black Sabbath's career. It was 1980, Ozzy was gone, and the band replaced him with Ronnie James Dio for their ninth album, Heaven and Hell. The new band hit the road for a big tour, and in their ranks was a young bass tech and pyro stagehand named Joey DeMaio, a dark-haired, pointy-nosed metal fan from upstate. One day on tour in Newcastle, England?a Sabbath fan site says the band played there on May 18 and 19?DeMaio jammed backstage with Ross the Boss, the guitarist from the opening act, Shakin' Street. DeMaio and Ross "shared an all-consuming love for in-your-face metal," according to Manowar propaganda, and thus, as all children at Manowar Middle School learn, the band was born.

Hmm, "in-your-face metal." As Manowar presents itself now?leather-clad warriors on some sort of mission to turn the world into a biker convention at Venice Beach, circa 1975?this declaration of principles seems earnest and unironic. But I wonder what Ross the Boss had in mind. Born Ross Funicello in the Bronx, he played guitar in the Dictators, punk-metal pioneers and the proud bearers of the joke-rock torch that had been burning since the inception of Blue Öyster Cult. They approached rock the way any great, physical comedian should, lunging into it and believing firmly in the joke. The Dictators broke up in 1978 and Ross played briefly in the fairly straightforward Shakin' Street, probably itching all the time to have some fun. Along came a roadie who could play a mean bass.

Manowar's first album, Battle Hymns, was released in 1982 on Liberty Records, and sounds like the work of a bunch of blue-collar Vietnam vets in a Molly Hatchet cover band. It's clear that they had something strong, but had not yet figured out just what Manowar would be. Some songs are actually somewhat socially relevant, telling of self-destructive war vets who can't find their way back into society. "Unemployment checks run out next week/It won't be very long till I'm back on the streets again," vocal recruit Eric Adams sings on the first song, "Death Tone." "You were sittin home and I got sent to Nam/I went to the big house, you just worked a job." A glimpse of humanity, but one that was not meant to last. DeMaio and Ross' inner J.R.R. Tolkien won out, and they filled the rest of the album?and every album since?with bombastic fantasy themes and odes to the abstract concept of metal, delivered like chant-along fascist anthems. They nailed it with "Metal Daze" and their theme song, "Manowar," which they still sing at the beginning of every concert.

The act is immediately apparent, but since it's what they do best, it seems to be what they believe in most strongly. Elsewhere on Battle Hymns DeMaio plays a bumblebee-fast arrangement of the "William Tell" overture on solo bass and somehow they got Orson Welles into the studio to record the narration for a long, boring epic called "Dark Avenger." Ross the Boss must have had the time of his life.

The formula stuck for a while, through three more albums with great titles: Into Glory Ride, Hail to England and Sign of the Hammer. And musically they really did have something. The early Manowar albums are what Judas Priest and Iron Maiden might have sounded like if they didn't have any interest in being on the radio and selling millions of albums?dark, no-ballads metal power-pop played by an extremely proficient band. They went to a major for Fighting the World, released in 1987, and it shows, with poppier, less substantial, more radio-friendly production. They re-recorded an old song, "Defender" (with another Orson Welles voice-over), sang an embarrassing entreaty to MTV in "Blow Your Speakers" and made possibly the worst album cover in history?a blatant rip-off of KISS' Destroyer, painted so badly it's hard to tell which leather-clad gym bunny is supposed to be who. In the background, various goblins make the Manowar salute?one hand clasping the other wrist directly over the head (a gesture that I've always thought could be a code for bondage).

The joke had gone bad. Ross the Boss lasted one more album?Kings of Metal in '88?and split to have more fun with his old pal from the Dictators, Handsome Dick Manitoba, whose new band was Manitoba's Wild Kingdom.

Since Ross' departure, Manowar has been through a guitarist or two and settled on Karl Logan, who looks like one of those archer elves in Lord of the Rings?straight blond hair, milky skin, pouty preadolescent face, skinny and no muscle tone at all. He's their Kirk Hammett, I guess, and like anybody who's lasted very long in Manowar, he seems to know how to take orders from DeMaio.

In the 90s, with DeMaio solely in control, Manowar's sound narrowed and regressed, and is down to an amazingly simple formula now. "Return of the Warlord" from Louder Than Hell ('96) is one of the purest expressions of arrested development that has ever been recorded. Over a one-note groove that sounds like slowed-down Motörhead, Adams sings lines like: "Don't try to understand me, my family never will/Had to punch my teacher out, yeah, now he's chilled." These are men in their late 30s! Here's another one: "I might stay in school or die in prison/Either way its my decision/One more beer and heavy metal and I'm just fine." A video the band made during their 1996 tour called Hell on Earth Part 1 has scenes that couldn't have been dreamed up by the Spinal Tap guys. "Let me show you how Manowar drinks a beer," DeMaio says onstage at one point during one of his many mid-show breaks, then takes a bottle, stiffly holds it a foot above his head and lets the foam fall all over his face and chest.

The video follows the band on a European tour, which is obviously a field day for them. They've been neglected in this country for years and relegated to small clubs?the last time I remember them playing New York was at Wetlands in January '97?but in Europe they're huge stars who get thousands of fans to show up for their concerts and festival appearances. And at every overseas gig there's at least one girl who doesn't mind being taken up onstage, doused with beer, picked up by the groin and submitted to the audience for permission to take her backstage.

But the most interesting parts of the video are where the band talks about its own music. In interviews around the world, DeMaio goes way out of his way to insist that Manowar's music is the real shit and that no other music in the world even comes close to their metal purity. ("What do you think of these bands that deny metal?" a Brazilian interviewer asks DeMaio. "They're assholes, they're just pieces of shit," he answers. "They belong in the toilet. Shit goes in the toilet. Flush them.") It reminds me of Andrew W.K., also stuck in the mid-80s sound. He's obsessed with preaching about how authentic he is?"This is not a fucking game. This is as real as death," he said to NME.

?Warriors of the World, Manowar's first studio album in six years, is coming out in late May from Metal Blade Records. And since they themselves make such a fuss about never, ever changing, the obvious question is, have they done the unthinkable and changed or developed as musicians at all?

I'm happy to report that the answer is no. In fact they seem to have regressed even a little further into their bellicose caricature. So many songs about fighting wars! Maybe they're still psyched for Operation Enduring Freedom. "Call to Arms" is pretty much what you'd expect from a Manowar song with that title, though remember that that involves a lot of sword-and-sorcery type lingo like "we fight for the kingdom, fighting with steel" and "kill all of them, their blood is a seal." The album also includes, bizarrely, a Manowar setting of Puccini's "Nessun dorma" aria, sung in heavily accented Italian by Adams. Then there's "An American Trilogy"?the medley freakin' Elvis used to do in concert. Is that metal? Sounds like they might be changing their....

But wait! Before long the galloping metal boogie returns, safe and sound, with "Warriors of the World United," "Hand of Doom," "Fight Until We Die" and some more war of nonsense set to chord progressions you might remember from a Twisted Sister album circa 1982. All is well.

Manowar's sound is stuck in something that was reductive kitsch metal 20 years ago, yet it's amazing how potent and fun it still is. At the Metal Meltdown in New Jersey, it was all anybody wanted to hear. The Meltdown, an offshoot of the long-running Milwaukee Metalfest, is a two-day experience of metal boredom, with a moribund crowd of a few thousand dredlocked dudes. One after another, the death-metal bands take the stage and blast out some unintelligible garbage for 20 or 25 minutes, the drummers pounding away so fast that it's impossible to discern any rhythm. This is music that was once the most extreme form of noise created by mankind; yet it has not changed from the state it was in a decade ago, and without the novelty of its threat it has nothing. And the crowds stood and watched it, looking half asleep, toying with their earlobe-stretching piercings.

The only groups that got people at all excited were the retro acts. As in the rest of pop music, the only excitement is in the retro shit, because people are just bored as hell with trying to keep up with the latest esoterica. By the time midnight rolled around, every metalhead was getting excited and for once actually getting up and shouting?so refreshing after so much death-metal-induced boredom. The second-to-last band, Nuclear Assault (themselves on a bit of a nostalgia trip), were rudely whisked off the stage pretty quick, but they were cool about it since they probably wanted to see Manowar too.

Immediately the house lights went up and the stage filled with roadies, who carry away the puny amps and communal drumset that every band for the last 12 hours has been using. Big amp cabinets start to appear on the side of the stage. Then suddenly a whole bunch of roadies roll out Scott Columbus' enormous, silvery drumset, with a big Manowar logo on the front of each bass drum. The crowd goes nuts. One guy behind me giggles, "I hear his drums are made of stainless steel!"

Manowar plays Weds., May 22, at the Vanderbilt in Plainview, Long Island, 516-694-6200, and Fri., May 24, at L'Amour, 1545 63rd St. (betw. 15th & 16th Aves.), Bklyn, 718-837-9506.