Unknown Soldier

The Lowdown
After making a cryptic splash with their previous Crystal Logic album (see review) the band would continue to take further strides into the waters of purer metal for their fourth album. Open the Gates would continue from where their previous Crystal Logic album left off and this time around most of the tracks on the album are inspired by Arthurian Legends, with the accompanying album cover designed by Eric Lamoy, which kind of denotes a more sinister looking Excalibur film style than to some of their more traditional Arthurian legend styles. Open the Gates would also be the band’s heaviest release to date and this is largely down to the arrival of new drummer Randy Foxe who had replaced Rick Fisher and proved to be a far more powerful and aggressive stickman overall. Manilla Road who may have started their career trying to fuse elements of space rock and progressive rock into their repertoire as seen on their first three albums, were now sacrificing this experimental approach, to fully embrace the more current metal mood of the day in thrash metal which can be heard full Manilla Road style on the album opener “Metalstorm” “Heavy Metal To the World” and “Weavers of the Web” which has a totally badass sounding thrash riff, because let’s face it no thrash vocalist warbled like Mark Shelton. The band were also looking for inspiration from the NWOBHM several years back as well and this has been incorporated into the album as well and can be heard on a tracks like "Road of Kings" which sounds like something that Saxon could've put out and "Hour of the Dragon" is pretty beefy as well, which all gave the band a nice hotch-potch inspired metal stew. Lyrically the esoteric sci-fi musings of frontman Mark Shelton were now giving way to Arthurian legend on most tracks, starting with the title track the impressive if somewhat short “Open the Gates” which leads the charge, as well as a few brief delvings into Norse mythology for good measure on the latter part of the album in "The Fires of Mars" and closer "Witches Brew". The band mix in their dynamic well with a song like “Astronomica” which almost starts off like a semi-ballad before evolving into a heavy sounding beast the looks right back to the 1970s for its inspiration. Mark Shelton was also no stranger to spoken narration on some of the tracks as well, as he had done previously on Crystal Logic and this time around it features heavily and most notably on the album’s showpiece track the sprawling nine minute monster “The Ninth Wave”. As said on the Crystal Logic review, one of the unique factors of Manilla Road was the band’s musical isolation from being based in Witchita and not benefitting from a local metal scene so to speak of. 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 Manilla Road albums unique despite whether they’re any good or not, as it’s almost like the band has never really 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 and imaginations.

Mark Shelton – Guitar/Vocals
Scott Park – Bass
Randy Foxe – Drums

Production- Manilla Road

__________________
Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History