To Kill a King

While many seem to have been largely disappointed with Manilla Road's post-reunion output, especially the albums from Playground of the Damned and on, I have largely defended them, being enamored not only with the more widely lauded Spiral Castle and Voyager, but also Playground and their 2015 album The Blessed Curse. Mysterium was the only album I found to be truly lacking inspiration (for the most part). Accusations of the band going stale and overusing the same musical ideas didn't seem to add up for me. Finally, though, I'm beginning to see what people meant. I'm going to explain why it took longer for these elements to become apparent to me in the form of an analogy to which I allude in the title of the review. Manilla Road are my all-time favorite band; for the purposes of the analogy, let's say they're my all-time favorite pizza joint. Not everyone loves this pizza joint, some people think it's terrible and others think only some of the items on the menu are good, but to me it's absolutely the best pizza I've ever had every time I eat from there. Now let's say that the Playground of the Damned album was like the last time I bought an extra large pizza, just for myself. Eating it hot and fresh out of the box was great; many others seem to have grown tired of the pizza joint but to me it's just as good as the first time I had it. This pizza is huge, though, and I may be eating it for the better part of a week. No worries, though, right? This is the best pizza ever. I could eat this every day of my life.

The second day it's still pretty good (I won't try to point too closely to specific albums here, since I wasn't huge on Mysterium, but my problem with the album was just a general lack of inspiration and not staleness or overused ideas, so I think my analogy still holds). The third day (second day of eating the leftovers), I still like it. Maybe not quite as much as I normally would, but it's still not at all a chore to eat it and I know it's almost gone, I'll be eating something else soon. Well, the fourth day (third day of leftovers) rolls around, and when I open the fridge to see what's available, I realize there's still some of that pizza left. I think about throwing it out, but I'm tight on cash and plus, it's my favorite pizza place, surely it'll still be okay? This time the crust is too hard when I pull it out of the microwave, the toppings are soggy and the cheese is starting to go tough; it's hard for me to even pull it apart with my teeth. Some of that signature taste remains, and for a bite or two I can even enjoy it, but ultimately it's a chore and I'm just waiting until the pizza is gone so I can move on to something else. This is what it's like listening to To Kill A King.

Now, to be fair, my analogy may have been slightly harsher than my actual reaction to this album is; I really enjoy about half of the album and even some of the rehashed musical ideas are incorporated well, but it's clear to me that the band just sounds tired. It's understandable; counting the Hellwell albums and The Circus Maximus, this is Shelton's 20th metal album, and his sixth in the last seven years. It's clear he's been pushing himself too hard, not giving his musical ideas enough time to fulyl mature and develop. Given that rate of output, the results are actually relatively impressive, but it still takes a very noticeable toll on the music. Many of the songs/ideas here feel recycled from the last few albums, and Hellroadie sounds as monotone as ever most of the time. I'm not actually sure I'd say this is objectively worse than The Blessed Curse (though I'd say that album definitely has higher highs); it's more the context in which the album was released. If this album had come out in 2015 and The Blessed Curse in 2017, my feelings of the band going stale might be directed towards that album, instead. Many of the problems I mention might not seem valid at all to someone whose introduction to the band is this album. Nonetheless, to someone familiar with the band's full discography, there are rampant issues.

The only song I'd really call "bad" is "Conqueror," which, as I mentioned in my recent Hellwell review, has a main riff/vocal line that has been done to death by the band, moreso than any other. You can reference that review for a list of songs it's been used in, but it's shown up in at least one song in every MR/Hellwell album since Mysterium, often more than once. This is one of the least interesting takes I've heard on the motif, and while the solo is good it's been self-plagiarized almost note for note from other songs, and the track is ultimately not worth hearing at all. "Never Again" is also lacking in energy and ingenuity, both the vocal lines and riffs failing to do much for me (although the lyrics are pretty cool, at least). "The Talisman" is decent, maybe good, even, but it falls into the same trap I've been harping on of sounding too samey. It's a very tight song and the flow and performance are very strong, but it just keeps feeling like it's some other MR song, "Into the Maelstrom" at one point, Hellwell's "Keepers of the Devil's Inn" at others, "The Grey God Passes" here and there, too.

It's not even always one specific song that comes to mind, just a mishmash of some of the band's recent sounds. A large part of my issue with that is that, for a long time (though the first Hellwell album, I would say), MR/Shelton changed up the sound to a significant extent on every single album; no two sounded quite the same. Most of this album is the exact opposite of that. "In the Wake" and "The Other Side," and "Blood Island" are all very strong, maybe even great, but they sound nearly identical to the most recent Hellwell album. "The Arena" is pretty good, but it could've been taken from the Mysterium recording sessions and I wouldn't know the difference. "Castle of the Devil" could very nearly be from The Blessed Curse.

The only songs that have their own identity are the title track and, to a lesser extent, "Ghost Warriors." The former is my favorite song on the album, largely for this reason. The sound is almost completely unlike anything else I've heard from the band, possessing a very "progressive" vibe in the sense that there are a lot of musical shifts that create a linear feeling like a story in more than one part. The only other MR song I can think of that has much of that aspect is "The Deluge." The opening riff is also very strange for the band in that it has a very theatrical quality, presenting a picture of grandiosity that comes off as almost regal (I'm sure my wording here is influenced by the song title, but it really does fit). The riff also sounds fairly prog rock-ish and has an ominous twinge to it. The thing that first came to mind when I heard it was the little-known heavy/USPM band Lazarus Sin, whose song "Blood for Mercy" has a very similar riff. Some of the other ideas in the song aren't completely foreign to the band (the bridge evokes "Mystification," the solo is a pretty normal-sounding one for them), but the way the elements are structured is unique, and Shelton's use of harmonized vocals in the chorus builds on the theatrical tone.

At the end of the day, To Kill A King is an album that pulls me in several different directions. I like the album for sure, and many of the songs are great in their own right, but the self-plagiarism is just so pervasive that it begins to intrude upon my enjoyment of it. The three songs that sound like the newest Hellwell album are a bit easier to forgive, since the sound is one to which we've only relatively recently been introduced, but on the others (which is half the album) I get this weird feeling I'm listening to a best-of compilation, except the song choice falls very much short of what I would expect a MR best-of to sound like. The fact that the best song is also the first doesn't help, either, as I came in expecting something of that quality and none of the other songs reached it. At the same time, the title track is also the least accessible, with most of the other songs being pretty immediate, making the track order even more jarring (who puts the weirdest, most complex song at the beginning?).

Objectively, averaging my enjoyment of each song individually, the album is more or less on par with its predecessor, The Blessed Curse, but my overall enjoyment of it is lower in two ways. First, The Blessed Curse has more material that I like due its longer running time, and would be something I'd give around 90% if it were cut to the best 10 songs. Second, To Kill A King possesses the fairly head-scratching quality of somehow becoming less than the sum of its parts when listened to as a full album, like anti-synergy or something. Every single track is better on its own than in the context of the album. Plus, none of the tracks, including the title track, is as good to me as "Falling," "The Muse's Kiss," or "Search for the Lost Chord." I would tepidly recommend it to those who are diehard fans of the band as I am, but for Manilla Road it's definitely below par.

One last brief note: Mark Shelton, if you ever happen to be reading this, I love you and I love Manilla Road, but please slow the fuck down. Take your time, give your ideas 2 or 3 years to mature, and give us another Voyager, not another Mysterium. I will find some enjoyment out of any release you put out, but if you keep this up we'll never see another masterpiece, and that would make me very sad.