Manowar

Warriors of the World could almost be seen as a long EP, instead of a full-length, but at least the wait is over. The undisputed gods of all that is beefy, big, metal, glorious and stupid are back with swords held high and horrible cover art in tow. The songs that comprise this 11-track album are fairly baffling: one 30 second instrumental, one longer orchestrated instrumental, one cover of an opera classic and one amazingly embarrassing collection of American civil war anthems (no, that's not a joke) are amongst the more questionable additions to the Manowar catalogue. In the seven remaining songs proper, there is a coma-inducing amount of ballad fluff, but the few remaining rockers make up for what may have put the confused Manowarian to sleep (for some ungodly reason the three heaviest tunes are the last three songs on the album). It's hard to not love the band, and the anthemic rockers on here will give any metalhead goose bumps, too bad there's more filler than substance, which is a first for the metal kings. Well, at least there are three more "of" songs to add to the list.