Manowar: Well Versed In Classics

Sadly, even in the 21st century, fans of Metal still have to face stereotypes that they are less intelligent because of the music that they choose to listen to. Whats more sad is the fact that the same people who choose to ridicule will go and rock out to crap bands like Nickle Back or Sloane. Every true metal fan knows that Metal is a fine art. One needs to have a basic idea of scales, harmony and progressions to write a good tune. A good metal album should have enough riffs to fill ten commercial records. One only has to see Dream Theater to be convinced. However, still the stigma lingers on.

However, I believe that the world is slowly waking up. Recently, the CBC reported a story where they compared peoples personalities to the music they listened to. Through serendipity they discovered that people who listen to metal have similar character traits as fans of classical music. The reporters reported on this with great amazement. However, the findings of that study did not surprise me at all, since, I became a fan of classical music through Metal. In his documentary Metal a Headbangers Journey, when disusing the origins of Heavy Metal, Sam Dunn credits Wagner as the first Metal composer for "bringing out the bottom end of the orchestra."

I believe that Metal can make people smarter since its content usually focuses on literary works, mythology, social justice and obscure schools of philosophy. Literary works such as The Lord of the Ring, Hobbit, and even the Bible are a common theme in Metal; and I bet a lot of people significantly expanded their knowledge by listening to the lyrics. I can speak for myself, recently I discovered a band called Skyforger. The theme of their music primarily focus on pagan traditions and believes of the Balts. This inspired me to get interested in my own heritage and research Slavic paganism and folklore. Metal made me want to learn!

There is hope! while reading up on Manowar in Wikipedia, I found a little review of their epic opus Achilles, Agony and Ecstasy in Eight Parts. For those unfamiliar with the song, it is an eight part, 30 minute opus that opens up the legendary album The Triumph of Steele (1992). The track is based on Homers Iliad. The track recently attracted the attention of a group of scholars at Bologna University in Italy. Mrs. Eleonora Cavallini, Professor in Classics, has written about this song:


"Joey DeMaio’s lyrics imply a careful and scrupulous reading of the Iliad. The songwriter has focused his attention essentially on the crucial fight between Hector and Achilles, has paraphrased some passages of the poem adapting them to the melodic structure with a certain fluency and partly reinterpreting them, but never altering or upsetting Homer’s storyline. The purpose of the lyrics (and of the music as well) is to evoke some characteristic Homeric sceneries: the raging storm of the battle, the barbaric, ferocious exultance of the winner, the grief and anguish of the warrior who feels death impending over him. The whole action hinges upon Hector and Achilles, who are represented as specular characters, divided by an irreducible hatred and yet destined to share a similar destiny. Both are caught in the moment of the greatest exaltation, as they savagely rejoice for the blood of their killed enemies, but also in the one of the extreme pain, when the daemon of war finally pounces on them. Furthermore, differently than in the irreverent and iconoclastic movie Troy, in "Achilles, Agony and Ecstasy in Eight Parts", the divine is a constant and ineluctable presence, determining human destinies with inscrutable and steely will, and, despite the generic reference to 'the gods', the real master of human lives is Zeus, the only God to whom both Hector and Achilles address their prayers"[1]

I'm glad that the academic world is slowly waking up. And who knows maybe one day this song will inspire me to give Greek Classics a try and learn more about it.