I cottoned on to a New York metal band called VIRGIN STEELE at the beginning of this year, thanks to basically random trawling through YouTube’s metal archives, and I haven’t been able to stop listening to them ever since.

Now, these guys have a rather intriguing history. They have been relentlessly – and rather unfairly – compared to another New York metal band, the legendary (and in some ways even more ridiculous) MANOWAR. Both bands are all about elaborate complex ideas and song structures; both are led by volatile and difficult geniuses; and both have completely over-the-top lyrics, themes, and concepts.

The comparison genuinely is not fair, however. MANOWAR was always about being as loud, fast, and crazy as possible; their whole “kill for metal” shtick was, and remains, their primary selling point.

They did venture into epic songwriting territory several times during their career, particularly in their magnum opus, The Triumph of Steel; the opening track on that album was nearly thirty minutes long and consisted of an (exceptionally good) examination of the triumph of Hector, the death of Patrocles, and the wrath of Achilles, all from The Iliad. And “Power of Thy Sword” – probably my favourite MANOWAR track ever – is six minutes of pure awesomesauce.

In fact, MANOWAR’s two best albums, the aforementioned TTOS and Kings of Metal, are both brilliant precisely because they embrace complex songwriting, broad themes, and “romantic barbarian mysticism”, so to speak. I’ll come back to that theme in a moment.

But for the most part, MANOWAR has stuck to being about as over-the-top as they can get away with. They take themselves way too seriously and the quality of their music is extremely patchy – and for all of their boasting about how they are not commercial or interested in mainstream success, they promptly sold out their principles the moment that they got even a sniff at a major-label recording contract with Fighting the World, which is one of the absolute silliest and most ridiculous albums ever recorded by any self-respecting metal bands.

When it comes to that “romantic barbaric mysticism”, MANOWAR never managed to take that idea to its logical conclusions. That was left to its cousin band, VIRGIN STEELE.

That band started at around the same time that MANOWAR did, in the same part of the world, from many of the same influences. The band was the creation of just two men, David DeFries and Jack Starr – just as MANOWAR was founded by bassist Joey DiMaio and guitarist Ross “The Boss” Friedman. And both bands have since been held together almost entirely by the singular vision and force of will of their primary member.

In VIRGIN STEELE’S case, that primary member is, and has always been, David DeFries, who has long since taken over the songwriting, lyrics, keyboards, arrangements, synth bass, and many other aspects of the band. He found the perfect partner after Jack Starr’s departure in Edward Pursino, a team player who was only too happy to just play instead of taking the front of the stage.

Listening to the evolution of the VS discography through time shows you just how massive and monstrous and overweening David DeFries’ ego really is, actually. If you listen to the early VS albums, you will see that they are much more straightforward and short than their later overblown, extremely complex, multilayered, dense, progressive, theme-driven works.

The reason why VIRGIN STEELE really gets compared to MANOWAR, unfairly, is because they sound very similar. And that is due to the fact that David DeFries has a voice that sounds like a dead ringer for that of Eric Adams. But this, again, is not an accurate comparison.

Eric Adams has a great voice, to be sure. But he doesn’t have a three-and-a-half octave range, and he cannot use his voice like a musical instrument, the way that David DeFries can, and does. All you have to do is listen to the best VS songs to realise that DeFries uses his voice in exactly the same way that a guitarist uses his own instrument.

And that’s where we get to the sheer brilliance of some of the VIRGIN STEELE compositions.

The best albums are definitely those from the mid-to-late 90s and early 2000s. Those albums consist of multi-part album-spanning epics, such as The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Pts 1 & 2, Invictus, and The House of Atreus Pts I & II. In fact, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Pts 1 & 2 and Invictus are a trilogy, and honestly, they probably are the very best that VIRGIN STEELE has to offer.

There is a lot of brilliant imagination in those five albums that I’ve mentioned. They are full of barbarian mythology, Homeric stories and themes, Greek and Roman legends, Scriptural references, and plenty more. All of it is filtered through the giant aggregation machine that is the brain of David DeFries, dumped into a blender stuck on high, and poured out in the form of an album of highly technically proficient metal – all you have to do is listen to the sheer power of the drums to understand that something special is happening.

So, without further ado, let’s get to some of the best that this band has to offer:

I got completely hooked on this song the first time I heard it – couldn’t stop listening to it for nearly an hour:

This next one is, in my personal opinion, one of the best songs ever recorded:

As is this one:

It is a real shame that VIRGIN STEELE has never really gotten the credit that they deserve. They have always been a unique band in their own right, guided by the singular vision and iron will of one man – with an ego the size of a bloody gas giant, of course. (How else do you explain the fact that, for 2015’s Nocturnes of Hellfire and Damnation, David DeFries essentially fired drummer Frank Gilchriest, whose superb, propulsive, concussive drumming style powered the extremely heavy rhythm section of the previous five albums and more, simply because he wanted to take credit for the use of a drum machine?)

Hopefully that will change over time as their influence and skill is recognised. They really deserve a lot more credit than they get these days.