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July 20, 2008 |
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Moments Of Steel
01. Manowar
02. Karl Joins
03. Scott Columbus Returns
04. Courage
05. Return Of The Warlord
06. Chicago
07. Madrid
08. South America
09. New Year's Eve
10. Commercial Shoot
11. Motorcycle Madness
12. Hell On Wheels Tour
13. The Power
14. Bull Fight
15. Carry On
16. Last Night
17. Gods of Metal / Spirit Horse
18. With Full Force / King
19. Daytona / Kill With Power
20. Hail And Kill
21. Credits
Bonus
01. Kings Of Metal - Live Festival - Essen, GER
02. Hinrich's Birthday
03. King - Live In Recording Studio - Hamburg, GER
04. Band Members
05. Credits
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Yes, the rating is 4/10, and no, I didn't mean 14. Before you MANOWAR fans get your loincloths in a bunch, let me defend myself by saying that I'm also a huge MANOWAR fan. I wear my "Hell On Stage" t-shirt as proudly as a war veteran wears his/her uniform on Remembrance Day. "Hail To England" is one of my favorite albums of all time, and I consider the band's other DVDs, "Fire And Blood" and "Hell On Earth Part 3," to be more essential than food or water. In fact, MANOWAR have shoehorned so much material into those DVD sets that their first DVD is rendered useless. But even if "Hell On Earth Part I" was the only MANOWAR DVD, it would still be disappointing.
At the time of the realease of "Hell On Earth Part I", MANOWAR fans were hungry for a live concert DVD, drooling at the prospect of seeing razor sharp cuts like "Kill With Power" and "Bridge Of Death" onstage. Unfortunately, "Part I" shows MANOWAR playing snippets of live tracks, with only a handful of songs performed from beginning to end. It seems as though MANOWAR intended this DVD to be, not a definitive live statement, but proof that the band really do walk the walk and live the life of heavy metal. If you want to see women perform oral sex on each other backstage, or Joey DeMaio drink beer off some girl's breasts, this DVD is for you. Apparently, everywhere in the world, there are attractive women waiting to go onstage and take off their clothes for MANOWAR. I can believe this in Europe, but I'm less convinced when I see women go crazy in U.S. cities like Cleveland and Chicago.
In the New Year's Eve party in Cleveland, the band say goodbye to 1996 (the DVD came out in 2001!), champagne sprays and the stage fills up with naked girls. Something tells me that the band just hired strippers looking for some extra money.
"Great act, Melonie."
"Thanks."
"I have a proposition for you. Do you like MANOWAR?"
"MANO-what?"
"Let me rephrase that. Do you like money?"
"Of course."
"How would you like to come to a concert and dance around?"
The bottom line is that if you're a feminist, you probably won't enjoy women being reduced to breasts (I would also suggest buying "Kings Of Metal" on vinyl instead of CD). Now there's nothing wrong with the female form, but the problem with this DVD is that the women take priority over the music. You'll hear Joey talk about fingering women but never his bass-strings. You can also expect to see a lot of motorcycle riding. At the halfway point, I found myself screaming at the TV: "We get it! You ride motorcycles! Women love you! You have tons of diehard fans! You guys are definitely metal...so how about playing some?!!?" The DVD also shows too much of the road crew and people outside the band, and too much footage is wasted on these people trying to be funny and failing.
How about the music? It bears repeating that only a handful of songs are played in their entirety, and unfortunately among those is "Carry On" and "Courage". There's an interesting clip of an orchestra playing "Courage," but watching MANOWAR play it afterwards isn't so engaging. It's the type of song that would be great to sing along to at a gig, but makes for insipid DVD viewing. As for "Carry On", that song should never have been written, let alone be included on a DVD. It's the type of song that you'd confess to a priest for writing. As far as good songs are concerned, expect "Manowar" at the beginning, "Power" at the halfway mark, and a strong finish with "Kill With Power" and "Hail And Kill" back-to-back. However, to add insult to injury, the live songs and the snippets are taken from the "Hell On Wheels" tour.
"Hell On Wheels" is a terrible live album, which unlike the vastly superior "Hell On Stage", features a weak vocal performance by Eric "Pecs" Adams. His puffing "Louder Than Hell" approach doesn't suit the older material.
Note that the negative review above assumes that the band didn't release any subsequent DVDs, but if you take "Fire And Blood" and "Hell On Earth 3" into account, "Part I"'s value changes from weak to worthless. Most of the songs played reappear on the other DVDs. The "Return Of The Warlord" video and the making of said video are covered in both HOE parts I and III. Many countries featured in HOE1 are revisited in the other DVDs, and aside from the bullfighting scene in Spain, "Part I" provides little insight about the cultures of these countries: all we learn is that they have MANOWAR fans. By the end of the DVD, I found myself wishing that MANOWAR had fewer fans, so there wouldn't be as many to show off.
There isn't nearly as much bonus material on HOE1 as on the other DVDs, but the live version of "Kings Of Metal" and the live-in-the-studio rendition of "King" are nice consolations, and each track features commentary à la " Hell On Earth Part 2". That being said, the bonus material doesn't come close to redeeming this stinker DVD, which I can recommend only to MANOWAR completists.
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