Highlights From The Revenge of Odysseus

2022 marked thirty years since Manowar's The Triumph of Steel, whose "Achilles, Agony and Ecstasy in Eight Parts", more than 28 minutes long, had been inspired by Homer's Iliad, and the band turned to the Odyssey to mark the anniversary and to thank its Greek fans. In November 2021 Manowar announced that it had recorded "The Revenge Of Odysseus" for its next studio album, and that bassist Joey DeMaio had recorded in Athens a narration by the actor Kostas Kazakos and his son Konstantinos Kazakos: a dialogue between Odysseus and his son Telemachus in Ancient Greek, translated from English by Sakis Tolis of Rotting Christ. DeMaio called the elder Kazakos "the Greek Orson Welles". In December 2021, on Metal Hammer Greece's television show TV War, DeMaio said he had first imagined a song of perhaps ten minutes, which kept growing as the narration moved from English to Greek and then to Ancient Greek and as one of Greece's best-known actors and his son joined in; he did not yet know whether the next release would be an album or an EP. On 22 June 2022, the day Manowar headlined the Release Athens festival, Magic Circle Entertainment released this five-track digital EP on iTunes worldwide, and other services followed. The tracks are "Athena's Theme"; "Telemachus - Part I", narrated by Konstantinos Kazakos and Sakis Tolis; the power ballad "Where Eagles Fly", sung by the guest vocalist Chiara Tricarico; "Odysseus and Calypso - The Island of Ogygia", narrated by Kostas Kazakos; and "Immortal", a new mid-tempo anthem inspired by Odysseus's escape from the island. In Athens the band played a 15-minute extract built around "Immortal" and "Where Eagles Fly", with Konstantinos Kazakos on stage as Telemachus and Tolis as the Oracle Halitherses, and the Scottish actor James Cosmo, who voices Odysseus in the English-language version, made an appearance. DeMaio promised to bring the rest of The Revenge of Odysseus to Greece; as of October 2026 the complete work has not been released.