Louder Than Hell

With this album Manowar moved to Geffen Records. Karl Logan, who had taken over from David Shankle in 1994, played guitar, and Scott Columbus was back on drums in place of Rhino, with Eric Adams singing and Joey DeMaio on bass and keyboards. The history the band posted on its website in 2000 describes the record as two years in the making; explaining the long gap, DeMaio said "We're perfectionists", and he described the aim as catching in the studio the force the songs have when the band plays them live. It was recorded and mixed at Haus Wahnfried in New York, with Rich Breen engineering and Ehab G. Haddad assisting. David Campbell arranged and conducted the orchestra, which was recorded at SoundCastle in Los Angeles, and George Marino mastered the album at Sterling Sound in New York; Manowar produced it. DeMaio wrote the songs, four of them, "Return of the Warlord", "The Gods Made Heavy Metal", "Outlaw" and "My Spirit Lives On", with Logan. Towards the end, two instrumentals, "Today Is a Good Day to Die" and "My Spirit Lives On", lead into the closing "The Power". The single "Return of the Warlord" entered the German singles chart dated 19 August 1996. The album came out in Europe in September 1996 and entered the German albums chart dated 7 October at No. 7, which was its highest position; in Finland it charted for five weeks from week 39 of 1996 and reached No. 11. In the United States, Billboard's issue of 19 October 1996 reported the album just outside its Heatseekers chart, at No. 10 and No. 20 on two of the magazine's regional lists.