In Defender, a father speaks to a son he has never seen.
He explains why he had to leave and gives him a purpose: to protect the helpless, to stand for those who cannot defend themselves, and to carry on the mission his father could not complete.
The father’s voice belongs to Orson Welles.
And the story behind that voice would eventually give Defender a meaning that no one could have planned.
Welles had already entered the world of Manowar through Dark Avenger, narrating the epic track on the band’s 1982 debut, Battle Hymns.
Then came Defender.
The song was recorded during the Into Glory Ride period but did not appear on the album. Instead, it was released separately as a single in 1983, with Welles providing the spoken narration. A Record Mirror report from November 1983 announced the upcoming single and specifically highlighted Welles’ voice-over.
Then time changed everything.
Orson Welles died in 1985.
Two years later, Manowar returned to Defender for Fighting the World. The band recorded a new version of the song.
But the voice of the father was not recorded again.
The narration from the original 1983 version was reused in the new recording. Welles himself never participated in the Fighting the World sessions.
And suddenly, the story inside Defender had an extraordinary parallel in the real world.
Welles plays an absent father whose words remain behind for his son.
Eric Adams becomes the son who hears those words, answers his father and accepts the legacy left to him.
But by the time the 1987 version appeared, the man behind the father’s voice was gone too.
Only his recorded voice remained.
What had been written as a fictional message from an absent father had unintentionally become something else:
a real voice from the past.
And every time Defender plays, the son answers again.
The father is gone.
The voice remains.
SOURCES
https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/Manowar/Defender/7597?
https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/Manowar/Fighting_the_World/529249
https://www.worldradiohistory.com/UK/New-Musical-Express/1983/NME-1983-11-01.pdf
https://www.worldradiohistory.com/UK/Record-Mirror/80s/83/Record-Mirror-1983-11-26-OCR.pdf