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Manilla Road > Metal > Reviews > Jophelerx
Manilla Road - Metal

Epic metal in its infancy - 74%

Jophelerx, March 27th, 2013

1982's Metal is an interesting stepping-stone on Mark Shelton's musical evolution throughout the years via the band Manilla Road (and more recently, Hellwell). 1982 was a year in which epic metal was hardly a well-established genre, with Manowar only just beginning their career that year with their debut full-length Battle Hymns, from which only two songs could really be called "epic". Other influences were sprouting up in the U.S., UK, Mediterranean area, as well as in mainland W. Europe, particularly Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands. However, Manilla Road's evolution is so logical, as well as early, that it's pretty clear they weren't taking in much of that influence. While bands like Omen, Existence, Elixir, and Valkyrie plotted their first respective moves on the heavy metal board, Manilla Road were already well on their way to becoming epic metal masters with their flawed, yet clearly significant work, simply titled Metal. Much more mature than the unsteady, rambling Invasion, yet more up-front and in-your-face than the shelved follow-up originally titled Dreams of Eschaton, Metal was rocking and ready to roll, with traces of both aggressive heavy metal and epic thoughts and ideations throughout.

Metal more or less serves as a blueprint for the Manilla Road albums to follow it, with a fistful of metal, a rockier number or two, and an album epic. In this case the rockier numbers are "Defender", "Out of Control with Rock n Roll" and "Far Side of the Sun". Whereas "Out of Control" and "Defender" are fairly banal and quite skippable, "Far Side of the Sun" is a decently enjoyable redux of the song from "Invasion", which was a bit overlong and unpolished. Stripped down to a more pleasurable length, "Far Side of the Sun" now stands as a solid rocker for the album. The epic here is "Cage of Mirrors", which is one of the strangest MR songs out there, with its circus-y intro leading into a progressively heavier sound. The buildup here is pretty cool, especially if you follow the lyrics, which speak from the perspective someone who uses black magic and ends up more or less opening a pandora's box, releasing nameless evil upon the world and screwing himself over in the process. Still, at some points the song feels a bit overlong with the repetitive riffing.

"Enter the Warrior" is a better example of a metal song; probably the most mature song here, this is both epic and in your face, almost to the point that it could have been released on Crystal Logic without too much problem; it sounds most similar to "The Veils of Negative Existence", with its dark, frantic riffage and gruff roars. "Queen of the Black Coast" has some metal in it, but it falls more into the proto-metal design of the majority of the album, not really able to completely get rid of those hard rock tendencies. Overall, the album is an interesting and necessary piece of the Manilla Road puzzle as it developed from a hard rock/shred group in the late 70s and early 80s to a full-on epic heavy/power/thrash metal band by the mid 80s. While Metal isn't their best album, nor even great by any standards, it still has a few enjoyable numbers and stands to show Shelton's progression throughout the years.