Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Manilla Road
Label: Golden Core Records
Release: 2015
Length: 88:25
Rating: 4/5
After the »patchy« releases Mysterium (2013) and »Playground Of the Damned« (2011), the legendary, let’s just say cult Kansas metallers Manilla Road are back with their 17th studio album, »The Blessed Curse«, and with it they’ve finally found their way back to the discographic legacy that, through a string of unforgettable releases in the eighties, made them one of the most revered bands among metal connoisseurs. Yet they never got the recognition they deserved for their past work, and stayed somewhere down in the underground of the metal universe, like a very well-guarded secret.
»The Blessed Curse« is the point where the band’s boss, the one and only Mark »The Shark« Shelton, woke up from his slumber and looked straight back at the roots of Manilla Road’s career, back to the days when the band was chopping out fantastic albums like »Crystal Logic« (1983) and »Mark of Death Mask« (1981), and delivered, with his crew, a devilishly good album, the kind that should have come out right after the great »Voyager« (2008)! From the frankly overly sleepy Mysterium, just two years later, came a complete transformation. We got an album full of bristling, cranked-up black marching anthems, where highly vibrant moods flow dynamically from one into the next throughout the compositions. At the center of it all is once again the distinctive voice of Mark Sheltona. He was never considered a good singer, and what’s more, you simply have to get used to his voice. If you can’t, there’s no way you’ll ever love Manilla Road. It has its own quirks and a special kind of charisma, but otherwise he’s a bad singer His voice has definitely lost its power over the years, but its color is so peculiar and so distinctly special that Shelton, with his nasal, howling, hollow voice, remains the central figure who keeps giving Manilla Road’s authorial expression an instantly recognizable stamp.
The album has a flaw. The production. This time the guitars are pleasantly cranked. Shelton went for a really old-school recipe, and his guitar is totally unpolished, sonically naked and extremely organic, which, together with his soloing and his special feel for following a melody, adds yet another trademark of classic Manilla Road. While Shelton’s vocals, guitar riffs and bass lines coexist tightly and actively in the sonic picture, the same can’t be said for the drum production, which sounds thin and absent, as if it were coming from a faraway phone booth. No matter how hard Naudi tries to »color« the transitions with brilliant rolls, sparkly double bass pedal work and so on, the »snare« drum has a dreadful sound. Shame. This very flaw in the sound production spoils the overall picture of an otherwise very fine product, one that proves the old farts are still plenty lively in their mature years and far from short on inspiration. Maybe Shelton should bring a producer into the studio and stop handling the production duties himself, since both previous albums suffer from similar production flaws. But a producer costs money, and Shelton is hardly the rich man of the music industry.
The Blessed Curse« offers a winning formula mostly because it has more fast songs, balanced out by longer compositions where the dramatic theatrics are especially honed. All the songs offer striking riffs that define the musical dossier of the band’s better albums. Especially bristling, not to say downright occultly mocking, are The Dead Still Speak and Truth in the Ash, and also Reign of Dreams and, toward the end, Sword of Hate. They’re wedged between tracks that, like the opening title track, unfold through a build-up of drama and theater, where the moods take vivid turns again and again. In these tracks the band, following the familiar recipe, very skillfully swings back and forth between bristling distortion and theatrical calm passages underpinned by clean or acoustic guitar accompaniment. Total epic darkness and mystery reign in them. In keeping with Manilla Road’s specific, original artistic dogma, Shelton was inspired by the ancient times of the Sumerians while making this album, so the poetry of the songs leans on the ancient civilization of southern Mesopotamia (today home to that poor, »unfortunate« Iraq). The album thus sucks us into the early Bronze Age, that is, into times more than 4,000 years before the birth of the unfortunate gymnast. The third track, Tomes of Clay, gets especially under your skin, with the band deliberately sailing into Arabic scales and creating a distinctly gloomy atmosphere. A gorgeous acoustic number follows at position no. 5, when Falling spins. Shelton’s special vocal approach squeezes out even more dramatic expression in these calmer moments. The album closes with the mini epic suite The Muses Kiss, which opens in a neoclassical style and counts as one of the album’s best moments, stuffed with boundless melancholy. Bryan Patrick joins Shelton’s vocals precisely in these calmer parts of the album, where the higher vocal lines of the harmony duets effectively contrast the dramatic moods.
»The Blessed Curse« also contains a bonus album with six tracks, titled »After the Muse«. Even though the tracks on the bonus album focus more heavily on acoustics in their arrangements, which take center stage, the real centerpiece is the song All Hallows Eve. In two different versions. The first one dates back to 1981, and the band found its analog recording in the studio, completely by accident, not long ago. It runs 12 minutes and is an atmospheric epic. Why doesn’t it run longer? Because the band ran out of analog recording tape back then! Crazy. All the expressive authenticity of the original is preserved, and you can vividly compare it with the newly recorded closing version of the song, tacked onto the tail end of the bonus album. Extended by three minutes,
The album »The Blessed Curse« very successfully and effectively catches up with the brightest chapters of Manilla Road’s discography. With a bit more care put into the production, which sadly limps on this record, it would have reached even greater expressive and artistic power. That aside, it delivers plenty of compositional musical delights and an excellent balance between fast, punchy songs and those focused on building a specific atmosphere, which will surely more than satisfy fans of the epic darkness of this mysterious American cult metal outfit!
Last year, on 22.07.2014, Manilla Road played the Metaldays festival in Tolmin, where they were the headliners of the second stage and put on an excellent show in the middle of a downpour. You can read the full RockLine report from that festival day HERE!
Lineup
Mark “The Shark” Shelton – guitar, vocals
Bryan “Hellroadie” Patrick – vocals
Joshua Castillo – bass guitar
Neudi – drums
Production
Mark “The Shark” Shelton
Track list
CD.1:
“The Blessed Curse”
1. The Blessed Curse
2. Truth in the Ash
3. Tomes of Clay
4. The Dead Still Speak
5. Falling
6. Kings of Invention
7. Reign of Dreams
8. Luxifera’s Light
9. Sword of Hate
10. The Muses Kiss
CD2.:
“After the Muse”
1. After the Muse
2. Life Goes On
3. All Hallows Eve 1981 Rehearsal)
4. In Search of the Lost Chord
5. Reach
6. All Hallows Eve 2014
