By Martin Popoff
But despite this idea of getting it right, and the extremes to which the band will evidently go, the production on Battle Hymns is all loose nuts and bolts, oddly rough and tumble, wildly veering from wonderfully excessive (vocals, guitar) to not enough (tom toms, snare).
"We went in there thinking we had to come up with a new sound, a whole new idea, a whole new deal. And actually Joey's bass playing reminded us of another guitar player up there (laughs). He didn't sound like a regular bass player, which changed the whole style and the whole sound of the band. We had a bass player who played like a lead guitar and sometimes did play lead on his bass (laughs). And we had a guitar player that would make his guitar do whatever was demanded of it. We had a drummer who was into what he was doing big-time, and that's all he cared about. He lived, breathed... that's all he wanted to do was play metal. And we had a singer who could sing and not just scream. So we were looking at ourselves saying, what can we do? Let's utilize all this. And that's why Battle Hymns has the singing and screaming. And that's why 'William's Tale' came out at that time, just to let the world know that we had a bass player who could play like this. So when it came to production, we didn't say, well, we're going to sound like that band because they had a big hit and it's time to jump on the bandwagon. To this day I hate that."
MANOWAR - Ancient Battles Page 6