Unknown Soldier

The Lowdown
Three years on the dark and dingy basement where Manilla Road lived, had gradually taken on a more sophisticated and complex décor in general, and all this would be revealed on their third album Crystal Logic. Their debut album Invasion had been a grassroots semi-classic and an album that was heavily influenced by both progressive rock and space rock, and as an album it’s very much the perfect example of what a metal connoisseur’s raw cult cult classic should sound like (see 1980 review) The band though by the time of their second album Metal in 1982, had completely got it wrong and the resulting album should be well avoided if possible, but by 1983 Manilla Road would issue their finest album to date on the Black Dragon Records label. A band like Manilla Road may well have been advised to drop their somewhat dated progressive rock and space rock influences around this time, especially after the dreadful Metal album, but instead on Crystal Logic the band manage to embrace these influences in the richest way possible and give us an album that combines their isolated sound and home-made approach to things. Overall Mark Shelton’s compositions range anywhere from just 1:35 to 12:01 with all kinds of song lengths in-between. The version of the album that I’ve listened to and am familiar with is the re-issue of the album (usually the one the band wanted originally) which came out in 2001 and is the one reviewed here. The album starts with the spoken “Prologue” and leads into the catchy “Necropolis” with its clicky and claustrophic sounding guitars, along with Mark Shelton’s nerdy warbling style vocals. “Flaming Metal Systems” starts with some pretty effective guitar wailing and presents an overall heavier feel with some astute lyrics by Mike Shelton and this song wasn’t on the original release. The title track “Crystal Logic” continues with this heaviness but in a much faster vein and demonstrates the band’s unique mix of addictive sounding tracks with diverse musical changes, all a nod to their proggy roots and this track is without doubt one of the gems from the album. The single “Feeling Free Again” basically sounds like some of their earlier material and the “The Riddle Master” continues in the style of the title track. “The Ram” despite being just under 4 minutes has something of an epic feel, especially with its dazzling guitar outro perhaps one of the best guitar sections on this year’s list. The final two tracks are closing epics in the 4 minute “The Veils of Negative Existence” and the 12 minute adventure of the “Dreams of Eschaton/Epilogue” with its Rush 2112 feel. One of the unique factors of Manilla Road, is the band’s musical isolation being based in Witchita and not benefitting from a local metal scene so to speak of, as do so many other bands featured here. This meant that the band had to find their own way musically, which for me always tends to be more interesting at times, than bands that just play off each other in a local music scene. This aspect is what really makes the Manilla Road album unique, it’s almost like the band had never listened to many other metal bands out there and are just content to play their own sound in the confines of their own isolated four walls. I’ve seen reviews that refer to Manilla Road as a kind of Jethro Tull offshoot due to Mark Shelton’s vocal approach being somewhat similar to Ian Anderson, but for me they always kind of remind me of the Blue Oyster Cult, in that the band’s isolated sound shares a certain hotch-potch and intelligent cryptic style feel that was always unique to the early BOC sound and also BOC frontman Eric Bloom wouldn’t have sounded out of place singing on Crystal Logic either. The album is also ranked Rock Hard magazine's list of ‘The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time’.

Mark ‘the shark’ Shelton- Guitar/vocals
Scott Park- Bass
Rick Fisher- Drums

Production- Mark Mazur

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