Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Manilla Road
Label: Zyx Music
Released: 2017
Running time: 61:04
Rating: 4/5
Mark »The Shark« Shelton and his crew of epic, pagan-flavored dark lords from the cult-status American rock and metal school, yes, we’re talking about the one and only Manilla Road, know no rest! Just two years on, a new studio album has landed. If my counting is still right, »To Kill A King« is the 21st studio album from this long-lived band out of Wichita (Kansas, USA).
The timeless figure behind this band’s excellent, magnificent body of work lives on. Not just on stage, but in the studio too. With new music, that is. With its predecessor »The Blessed Curse« (2015), Shelton, as the band’s main songwriter, finally reconnected with the roots and the golden era, after the dull »Mysterium«, back when Manilla Road were putting out »Crystal Logic«, »The Deluge«, »Open The Gates«, »Mistification«,… Those years are gone, and we can neither demand nor expect Manilla Road to recap the old days. What we can demand is an album charged with energy and inspiration, teeming with excellent, striking riffs and soaked in a dark, epic mood, full of mysticism and occult, doom-laden drama theater, which Manilla Road have always been great masters of.
»To Kill A King« is not only a hugely appealing follow-up to its solid predecessor »The Blessed Curse«, but an album that sounds a touch more retro still and chases an even more intense connection with the band’s golden era.
The production is old-school, of course, stubbornly traditional, and Shelton isn’t going to budge an inch on that. Still, the sound is extremely lively and organic, and at times it feels like a live demo recording. You’ll need to get used to the sound of the snare drum. Once again it sounds thin, like it’s coming out of a biscuit tin, but Shelton obviously likes it that way, so that’s how it has to be.
»To Kill A King« is once again full of fantasy and mysticism. It’s an album of dark vistas, where the hero is torn between a tangle of madness and pain, tormented by evil spirits and led into sinful temptation. The guitar phrases and rhythms are very similar from song to song. This is an album that came together in a relatively short time and was also recorded very quickly. Manilla Road have always approached making new material this way. Most of the songs are locked into a mid-tempo groove. In the instrumental middle sections Shelton reigns with his vivid solos, played off the cuff, very intuitively and with a raw, primal feel that never saw any after-the-fact studio polish. Once again this sturdy fellow takes center stage with his distinctive vocals. Hellroadie, more often than not, only backs him up with vocal accompaniment this time and doesn’t step into the lead singer role, which belongs to Shelton. And he was never considered a good singer. In fact, he’s a bad vocalist, and this time too you won’t have trouble noticing that the nasal old-timer tends to drift away from the ideal vocal lines. But that’s no new discovery, and that’s just how it has to be. Still, the Shark’s “hollow” vocal tone is really something special, striking, signature, and honestly unique in the world of hard rock and metal. That’s also Manilla Road’s winning ace in the hole, the thing that earned them a special place and cult status on the map of old-school metal.
The songs are all seasoned with a high level of musicality. Full of dark epic aesthetics and gloomy pomp and bombast. When it comes to pomp and epicness, the clear winner among the songs on the new album is the opening title track, a mini epic suite running over ten minutes .Right after it we run into the only truly fast moment on the album. That’s the song Conqueror. After that it’s one epic march after another, all the way through to the closing Blood Island. Hence the feeling that the album might be a touch too long and that ten minutes less music would have done the job.
What matters is the realization that Shelton and the crew have still found enough inspiration for a hefty bundle of new material. Across a good solid hour, Manilla Road keep that proper (read: old-school) octane and raw energetic charge, along with that mighty touch of occult, doom-laden mysticism that keeps the listener on edge, even though, as already said. the album could have been a little shorter. “To Kill A King” works in every move and element as “tried and tested” and “heard before”, which proves that in this day and age Manilla Road don’t know how to make a different album. Luckily, »To Kill A King« is a very nice and still high-quality piece of work, and its material will hold its own on concert stages too, keeping the band’s older classics company in the set list. With »To Kill A King«, Manilla Road have proven they’re not ready for the scrap heap just yet, even if the golden days are behind them.
Line-up
Mark “The Shark” Shelton – guitar, vocals
Bryan “Hellroadie” Patrick – vocals
Phil Rose – bass
Neudi – drums
Production
Mark “The Shark” Shelton
Track list
01. To Kill A King
02. Conqueror
03. Never Again
04. The Arena
05. In The Wake
06. The Talisman
07. The Other Side
08. Castle Of The Devil
09. Ghost Warriors
