YMMV / Manowar

• Alternate Character Interpretation/Poe's Law: Much debate has been had about whether they're a Stealth Parody or Serious Business about everything they do. There seems to be no in-between... but what else would you expect from Manowar? If they ARE a Stealth Parody, they are a VERY affectionate one. Their love for the genre and its conventions is undeniable.
• Broken Base:
  • Either you will find the band to be awesomeness incarnate, or you will find them to be Narm incarnate. There is really no middle ground to this.
  • Any album post-Kings of Metal, especially Gods of War, tends to elicit this reaction from fans. They're either great albums that show that Manowar's Still Got It, or they're prime examples of Seasonal Rot/Sequelitis that play up the ham to beyond Narm levels and make the band look like washed-up has-beens.
• Cliché Storm: The band's lyrics often seem like this. It's not a bad thing, though; it just adds to the band's general Narm Charm.
• Ending Fatigue: "Blood of the Kings" has two pseudo-endings before the real one, and can be rather annoying to listen to because of this.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • They're far more popular in Europe than in their home country of America, where they're more of a cult band.
  • They are also very popular in South America, Japan, and Australia.
  • Many fans don't even know that they are from America and assume they are British. Having a couple of songs that mention how they met in England probably doesn't help.
• Ho Yay:
  • "Blood Brothers" from Gods of War could almost be considered a love song instead of a song about the Power of Friendship.
  • "We like it hard, we like it fast" from the song "Kings of Metal" is this.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The artwork for Anthology, depicting the band wearing only loincloths. It's frequently listed as one of the worst metal album covers of all time. It's not considered an official release by the band. (Though The Kingdom of Steel: The Very Best of Manowar is the only one of several compilations they endorse, so it might not be just because of the album art.)
  • The line "Wimps and poseurs, leave the hall!" (often simply shortened to just "Leave the hall!") from the song "Metal Warriors" is often repeated by metalheads as a joke about elitist fans.
  • This clip from the 2007 Magic Circle Festival Volume I DVD, in which an over-enthusiastic fan declares that "anyone who doesn't like Manowar is afraid of himself... you motherfuckers!"
• Narm Charm: Well, the band's lyrics are all about ridiculously over-the-top machismo, and nobody hides it, and nobody pretends to have any deep message in those lyrics either. However, would the band still be Manowar if things were any different? Of course, their songs do go in considerable depth about Norse mythology, and Achiles was noted by one scholar as being a stellar example of Shown Their Work. Also, Christopher Lee liked them.
• Once Original, Now Common: Manowar is often criticized/mocked as "cliche" for using sword-and-sorcery themes in their songs, when they are actually among the first metal bands to do so on a regular basis.
• Signature Song: "Kings of Metal," 'Metal Warriors," or "Achilles, Agony and Ecstasy in Eight Parts."

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