The MANILLA ROAD thread

[Jasonic]

Holy smokes!! Great review my friend.
Sounds like you had an awesome time.
Man, they played a couple of my top 10 Manilla Road tunes, such as Astronomica, Divine Victim, Flaming Metal systems....
What a killer setlist.

Good to hear the new one will be on Shadow Kingdom. That will get some better distro in the States than My Graveyard did with VOYAGER.

Did they have any merch?

 

[rms]

Astronomica would be an amazing way to end the night! I like your comment about the drumming, Manilla Road is some of the best songwriting i've ever seen in a band..and going strong with what, 13 albums? so fucking jealous man! im going to their next stateside show regardless!

 

[Jasonic]

I feel very fortunate to have seen them the one time I did.
Unfortunately, I was not terribly familiar with them at the time, outside of a couple tracks I downloaded online.
I would seriously go apeshit I think if I were to see them today, esp if it was the setlist you saw this weekend.
DAMN,I am still in awe at what they played.

 

[Pellaz]

I have travelled to cancelled shows before. I made sure that this one was legit by calling at least three times the week before it.

WHY couldn't I have been so smart, before flying up to DC to see Hawkwind many years ago?!?!?!?!?!


Sounds like MR was an awesome excuse for an 8-hour roadtrip!

 

[Jasonic]

Pellaz - What happened with Hawkwind? Did they cancel? Was it a whole tour?

I have only begun getting more into them. Not too familiar with their previous touring activity.
Doesn't seem like they have played a lot in the US in recent years.

 

[Pellaz]

Pellaz - What happened with Hawkwind? Did they cancel? Was it a whole tour?

I have only begun getting more into them. Not too familiar with their previous touring activity.
Doesn't seem like they have played a lot in the US in recent years.

No, they haven't. The show was cancelled and, as this was well before the age of the worldwide web, I'm not sure if it was just the one date or the rest of the tour....it didn't really matter, since I sure as heck couldn't travel to another Northeastern date.

Then there was the time I drove all the way to fuckin' Tallahassee, Florida to see a friends' band open for Christian Death, only to find that the show'd been cancelled by a clueless school who thought they (C.D.) were Satanic or something. (The show was at UF, on campus.)
I blew out the speakers in my car on the way home, staging my own, err, loud concert for myself.

 

[Palabra de Dios]

Also worth noting, Mark uses the same pedal that I use for high gain leads and low crunch: Boss Metal Zone. I dig.

 

[rms]

The Deluge is being reissued by Shadow Kingdom Records!

 

[raising_iron]

^^^When?

Since we're back on topic...I've been listening to this band since the mid - 80's so lets rank 'em:

(note - I'm leaving out deluge since the last time I heard it was when I had it on tape in the 80's and I can't remember it!, also leaving out mark of the beast as I've never heard it...{no lives, best of's, etc. either!})

Open the Gates
Crystal Logic
Spiral Castle
Courts of Chaos
Voyager
Mystification
Gates of Fire
Metal
Atlantis Rising
Out of the Abyss
Invasion
Circus Maximus

Wow, that was tough...most are righteous and you have to do a personal nit-pick to put one above the other, I can say for certain though Open The Gates and Crystal Logic are the top 2 and CM resides in the cellar...

 

[Element_man]

I came in here to spread the love about The Deluge, but rms beat me to it. I love this band. Too bad I'll have to fly to Greece or Germany just to see them live though

 

[Palabra de Dios]

That's great news about The Deluge! It's their only proper album I don't own, and it goes for way more than I want to pay for a CD or a vinyl on eBay. I have some collectible CDs that cost me in the 30-40 dollar range, but that's about my ceiling.





Edit: And also, I looked on Shadow Kingdom's label website, on their "Coming Soon" section, it says May 2011 for the release date of The Deluge rerelease. Cool stuff

 

[rms]

I came in here to spread the love about The Deluge, but rms beat me to it. I love this band. Too bad I'll have to fly to Greece or Germany just to see them live though

They played in Kansas like last May or something, just in the middle of recording right now if i'm not mistaken

 

[Palabra de Dios]

They play bar shows in their hometown of Wichita every now and then.

 

[Corsair]

I recently picked up a few of their discs (Circus Maximus, The Deluge, Open the Gates, Atlantis Rising and Voyager)

Of them I have to admit that the TCM is probably my favorite, but it's definitely a black sheep among the others, incorporating some influences that I don't think most folks around here would probably take to well. Several tracks have a _very_ obvious Skin Yard influence (Spider, In Gein we Trust, Flesh and Fury), but I'm fine with that since Skin Yard is one of my favorite bands, and in listening to MR I have half a reason to suspect they may have exerted some influence over Skin Yard in some ways.

Compare 'Flesh and Fury' to Skin Yard's 'Open Fist'. Which might be difficult since there aren't any youtube links for the former, and the latter contains arguably NSFW album art, and I don't think most people would be terribly interested in it anyway (which is fine, by the way.)



SO yeah, like all the information states, it wasn't really intended to be a proper MR album, but IMO it's still a fantastic recording. And doesn't sound like any of the others at all. Stylistically, it's rather all over the place but that's never bothered me much.

Speaking of the others, I really enjoyed the heck out of them as well, but Atlantis Rising was relatively weak, despite having a few really awesome tracks. The crappy production on Voyager doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would. I think I liked the Deluge the best out of the -proper- MR albums but I'll have to listen through them all a few more times to see what ends up standing up.

And just to contrast, I wasn't too impressed with Crystal Logic* (which I don't own, but borrowed from a friend) so anything I say can, and should be taken with a fist-sized chunk of salt.

*But still found it interesting enough to pursue more of their material.


edit-
Holy fuck I didn't even realize The Deluge was that hard to find. Dumb Luck!
*hoards*

 

[raising_iron]

^^^I don't know, maybe you had to be there, but Crystal Logic was pure epic kvlt glory in the mid-80's and remains a beacon of the underground today, give it another couple spins and listen while keeping in mind that context...there's no doubt new fans trying to reach back 25+ years into such bands as Manilla Road, Omen, Cirith Ungol, et al would find it hard to assimilate, relate, and debate these pickled conundrums, all these guys dwelt within a peripheral orbit of metal few cared to visit then, let alone now, so it always makes me smile when someone does dig in, settle in, and absorb in the ancient underground...

 

[Corsair]

^^^I don't know, maybe you had to be there, but Crystal Logic was pure epic kvlt glory in the mid-80's and remains a beacon of the underground today, give it another couple spins and listen while keeping in mind that context...there's no doubt new fans trying to reach back 25+ years into such bands as Manilla Road, Omen, Cirith Ungol, et al would find it hard to assimilate, relate, and debate these pickled conundrums, all these guys dwelt within a peripheral orbit of metal few cared to visit then, let alone now, so it always makes me smile when someone does dig in, settle in, and absorb in the ancient underground...

Well, I can't really do that because for me it would be like judging the music on criteria that doesn't necessary involve the music directly; I've been told similar while being encouraged to listen to Bon Jovi's ealier stuff but I just don't think i'm going to ever like it... On the other hand I generally don't have a hard time stomaching a lot of some of the more 'contested' bands. Just to use Cirith Ungol as an example, I have sincerely enjoyed all of their studio albums, but it did take a while to get adjusted to the vocals. they've grown on me, and I can't imagine the band with any other singer/singing style, and I kinda feel the same way about Manilla road, Crystal logic wasn't the "right" kind of heavy for me, if that makes any sense, but regardless of that, I may consider picking it up in the future just to give it a more thorough and attentive listening, because it's still -interesting- but nothing really pulled me in like The Deluge or Open The Gates.

 

[Mr. Zane of HW]

one of the absolute highlights of my music career was when I was the touring Vox for Cauldron Born(2001) and we played Powermad fest and met Mark the Shark, and he complimented my performance after watching Cauldron Born(how many legends will do that?). All the Manilla Road people were awesome, down to earth and just good people in general. My fave is Mystification but I feel you really can't lose with any of thier discs as they all have a unique voice and identity.

 

[Palabra de Dios]

Corsair, where did you "pick up" The Deluge? All of the normal internet outlets have it for like 80-150 bucks or not at all. You make it seem like you walked to the neighborhood record store and there were a few Manilla Road albums to buy, which also seems unlikely.

Just wondering, because if you know of a site that has other copies of Deluge for sale at a reasonable price, I want it.

 

[JontRevolting]

Sorry i'm new to this forum but I love this band and noticed that Overlorde whom I also love were mentioned earlier in the thread,I just want to show respect and say that I am really happy about the imminent re-issue of 'The Deluge'.

 

[Corsair]

Corsair, where did you "pick up" The Deluge? All of the normal internet outlets have it for like 80-150 bucks or not at all. You make it seem like you walked to the neighborhood record store and there were a few Manilla Road albums to buy, which also seems unlikely.

Just wondering, because if you know of a site that has other copies of Deluge for sale at a reasonable price, I want it.

Long story short, a friend of my father's was selling off his record/movie/video game collections to pay bills.
It is exceedingly unlikely, but that's part of what makes it awesome. DUnno if you follow vidja game trade values, but I also got a near mint copy of Dragon Force and Shining force III from the deal. Which means that I now have three copies of SF III. Truthfully I don't think he quite knew the value of what he had, or needed the money faster than selling everything at full value would have made possible.

However none of the albums are in particularly good shape, and some of the tracks skip pretty badly.