MANILLA ROAD (Eng.)
– Thank you so much for answering to our interview. Is an honour for me having the chance of interviewing MANILLA ROAD.
Shark: Thank you my friend for doing the interview. If I remember well we have done an interview before back a year or two, so it is good to have the chance to do it again with you.
– «Mysterium» is how your new album is entitled. Tell us a bit what’s this new MANILLA ROAD’s album based on, is there any concept behind the songs?
Shark: Mysterium is not a complete concept album but it does have a couple of different concepts within and the whole album has an underlying theme to it. The underlying theme is mostly directed towards standing your ground and not giving up on your quests in life. If I had to label the idea behind the project to one word that word would have to be fortitude. As for the actual concepts of the songs there are 4 songs that are linked to a Scottish / Irish theme dealing with the Battle of Clontarf based on a story by Robert E. Howard called The Gray God Passes and also 3 of those songs relate to my family heritage with the border clans of Scotland. One of those 3 songs is more about a story I created myself called The Battle of Bonchester Bridge which I came up with while at the Bonchester Bridge late one night drunk on Scottish Ale. The other two songs are more historic and legendary. There is also the Mysterium title cut that is directly related to my family heritage as well but this one is from the German side of my family. It is about my Great great great Uncle Ludwig von Leichhardt who was a famous German explorer in Australia whose final expedition mysteriously vanished with almost no trace in 1848. To this day nobody really knows the fate of my uncle or his patrol. So as you can tell there is a lot of stuff related to my family with my Scottish, Irish, Viking and German heritage.
– And about the cover artwork, what does it represent this time around? And why did you pick «Mysterium» as the title of your new record?
Shark: The cover art is done by Alexander von Wieding and is based on the Scottish stuff. There is the ghostly Scottish horde getting ready to do battle on the Bonchester Bridge on the front and then the wrap around to the back cover is the castle Hermitage which one side of my family helped guard in the past. I have actually been to the ruins of that castle with my daughter. The title Mysterium was chosen because of the mystery surrounding the disappearance of my Uncle in Australia. Since Mysterium is the longest epic song on the project it seemed like a good choice for the title cut.
– I have had the chance of listening to the album and, as with your previous effort, it has surprised me the fact is also a really straight-forward effort, with just one lenghty song, lasting 11 minutos. Has this ended up exactly as you expected?
Shark: Yep it’s pretty much what I had in mind for this release. Gates of Fire and Voyager were sort of full album concepts and so I had decided to not do full album concepts for the Playground of the Damned and Mysterium. When you do concepts that take up the entirety of the project it sort of limits your topics on a project. I had a lot of different things I wanted to touch on, topic wise, on both Playground and Mysterium that I would not have been able to do yet if I had done full album concepts on the last two projects. I have already been working on the material for the next Manilla Road album and I am going back to the big concept idea on about half of that project. I won’t say what about yet but if you were thinking of the project in album form then all of one side of the album will be a single concept. Maybe the next album after that I will delve back into a full album concept.
– Something else that has caught my attention this time around is the guitar sound, sharpening, piercing and relentless, with make the album sound really electric. I couldn’t know how to describe it but, as always, it retains the band’s essence. How did this idea and sound arise?
Shark: Thanks for the kind words. A lot of my guitar sound is because of the amplifier set up I use. I use a really old vintage Marshall 50watt amp that has been modified by a company called Thesis Audio. The amp was specially modified with me in mind. It has no transistor or digital technology in it but does have a special tube overdrive pre-amp system built into it. Both channels on the amp have been hard wired in a loop with each other so that I am using all the amps resources simultaneously. It is a really sweet rig when it comes to tube amps. I also have to give some credit to my 2nd engineer, Derek (Dr. Doom) Brubaker, in Midgard Sound Labs and the engineer at Cornerstone Studio Steve Falke. They both have contributed a lot to the engineering and sound of this project.
– It personally reminds me a lot to your 1987 and 1988 albums, «Mystification» and «Out in the Abyss», and also to the 2000 and 2001 albums «Atlantis Rising» and «Spiral Castle». Do you notice something of this or is it just my appreciation?
Shark: Well I sort of tried to capture the essence of all the phases of Manilla Road style throughout the last 3 decades on this project. We have traversed so many different styles and approaches over the years that it is not an easy thing to accomplish but I am not surprised when anyone hears a bit of a resemblance to our past endeavours because the idea was to create an album that really exposed a gambit of the styles of the band.
– Stringing together the previous questions, your previous release for instance, «Playground of the Damned», it felt to me more like the early days of the band. Is MANILLA ROAD a cyclic act, that uses in each album something of the earlier albums to the a true and musical cycle?
Shark: Yes we are most likely a cyclic type band because I am always connecting the dots with past releases you might say. But we are not becoming complacent because of this. We still experiment a lot while we are writing and recording and that is why each Manilla Road album never sounds exactly the same as all the others. I love to move forward but I also don’t want to ignore or forget about the past because the roots of the band are as important to me as where we are headed in the future. There have always been those intentional trips back down music lane from the past. For example the end of Epitaph to the King on Gates of Fire has a section that is derived from The Ninth Wave off of Open the Gates. I do this sort of thing every once in awhile especially when it seems to have really pertinent aspects to the song that we are writing.
– I would like to know about some of the tracks on the album, «Stand your Ground» and «Only the Brave» for instance, two superb tunes almost Thrash, really powerful, which remind to more 80’s periods. How didese songs born?
Shark: Both of those songs came from me just cranking up the amps in the studio with no real direction in mind at the time. I just started jamming and Dr. Doom started the recording machines up and before you know it I found some riffs that inspired the rest of the songs contents. It was really a spur of the moment and spontaneous thing with both of those songs. I really do try and let the muse lead me in the correct direction when it comes to music creativity. Now the more epic songs that are intricate tend to be a different story. I sometimes work forever, it seems, trying to put the correct parts together and come up with the ultimate arrangement. Epics are really easy to screw up if you don’t pay attention to what you are doing. It’s always a challenge to keep the epics headed in the right direction. If you don’t watch out it is easy to end up creating a really long boring song. But in the case of these two songs it was all inspiration and jamming.
– «The Battle of Bonchester Bridge» and «Hermitage» are two of those tracks where MANILLA ROAD shows it knows how to sorround the music and eve create pictures. What does MANILLA ROAD tell us in these two songs?
Shark: They are both related to my Scottish background. Bonchester Bridge is a real place that my daughter and I were at while on holiday in Scotland. I was pretty drunk on Scottish Ale that night and ended up wondering around the bridge in the late of the night while the fog and mist surrounded me. I imagined the story line for the song while I was doing this and so the story is completely contrived but I still think it is a great story and lyrics if I don’t say so myself. As for Hermitage that directly relates to my family heritage. It is a real castle that some of my ancestors were sworn to guard back in the day. I was there with my daughter and the story behind the song follows the legend of the castle and William DeSolis who was the Lord of said castle at one point. Historical detail and legend don’t really agree when it comes to the events of the castle and it’s lords. I chose to make the story line about the legend instead of historic detail because, to be quite honest, the legend is much more exciting than the documented history of the events.
– A true surprise has been for me the track «The Fountain», which actually breaks a little bit the line on the album, but is 100% a MANILLA ROAD’s song with 70’s touches at te JETHRO TULL’s vibe, which creates a really beautiful song. Tell us about it, Mark.
Shark: The Fountain is a bit of a step into my folk style roots. It has a bit of a Scottish flair to it but I think the real strong point is the lyrics and the meaning behind them. It is a song about fortitude and not giving up the search for your dreams. It was actually our drummer Neudi that when he heard the song decided immediately that it should appear on Mysterium and even when I asked him if he could do some percussion parts to it he declined saying it was perfect the way it is. So Neudi had as much to do with The Fountain being on the album Mysterium.
– Then we have really heavy songs as «The Grey God Passes», «Do What Thou Will» and «Hallowed by the Grave». As I said earlier, you have managed a really electric guitar sound. Are you happy with the result obtained with these tunes?
Shark: Yep. I really like the production on this album and the guitar sounds are good also. I always find myself wanting to hear more of the guitar but that is because I am the guitar player I suppose. I have to watch myself when mixing because I will end up with the guitar tracks being louder than everything else. I have a favourite response to sound men that ask me what I want the mix to sound like. I usually respond with “If you turn up everything louder than everything else I will be happy.” Hahahaha, sometimes it takes awhile for the sound man to get the joke.
– And to end the album an instrmental track called «The Calling», a true wonder, an epic and cosmic songwriting as only MANILLA ROAD can. How did someting like this arise?
Shark: That was E.C.’s idea to use it as sort of an intro to the title cut Mysterium and I must say a great idea it was. I just love that type of interlude material and Ernie is really good about being able to come up with suitable sounding stuff for these types of songs.
– And the last song, the title track, is the only lengthy one on the album but, at the same time, as in almost all your albums, is the song that better describes the band. In 11 minutes we can find all things listened before; is this the idea of those lengthy songs you always have?
Shark: I don’t really have a specific equation for doing the epics but I do spend a lot more time on them than I do some of the other material. I guess part of that is due to the length of the songs but also due to the importance of the epic song in my mind. When it comes to epics I think the music should be as big and brilliant as the story itself. And the lyrics should always be right on the money when it comes to epic sagas. I don’t think I actually set out to make sure that the epic songs encompass a little bit of everything from the album. It just sort of comes out that way sometimes. I do like messing with recurring themes and have used that technique several times in the past.
– So already checked the whole album; how does the touring situation look like for this 2013?
Shark: We are going to be touring more than we ever have in the past. Most of us have been raising children for the last many years and some of us still are but it just seems like it is time to get out on the road and see what kind of damage we can do on the road. It has been a real challenge to hold down a regular job, raise kids and do the music thing all at the same time. Luckily it is getting better for Manilla Road on the music front and since most of our children are pretty grown up now, except for a few, it seems like the right time to hit the touring harder than we have before. So we will be touring all over the world this year and doing our best to kick everyone’s ass where ever we go.
– I recently got the news you will be playing in Spain next May, concretely at Pounding Metal Fest. I use to go to that festival and I’m thankful MANILLA ROAD will finally put its hammer in Spain. Could you tell us something about how is this really important even for all of us that are diehard fans of the band is going to be like?
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hark: It is a huge thing for us when we finally play in a country that we have never been to before. I know that we have many supporters in Spain so we are really looking forward to playing there. We will most assuredly be trying to be on our A game for that show, not that we don’t try to do that at every gig. But this show is really important to us. We have had many fans from Spain travel all over Europe to see us and now it is going to be great that we are finally coming to them. I have been very lucky to have the opportunity to travel and play music all over and it would not have ever been possible if not for our fans. And all of the fans from Spain I have ever met are wonderful people and great supporters of the Road. So I can’t wait to come and deliver the goods. Kick some ass and rip up the stage in the name of the gods of old and the muse of creation. I’m sure it will be an awesome experience for Manilla Road and the fans as well. Thanks to all of you for giving us the chance to do this.
– So that’s everything from our side. I would like to thank you for the interview I did with you in 2011, I was impressed with your way of understanding music and MANILLA ROAD, I remember as final words you said: «I am sworn to the gods and the muse to continue this quest for the lost chord as long as I live and with your help I may even some day achieve just that. Up The Hammers & Down The Nails.» I also hope to be able to listen that chord someday. See you in May!!!
Shark: It has been an honor and a pleasure to do the interviews with you and I hope to see you in May at the show. And to all of you out there Up The Hammers & Down The Nails. Blessed Be and if you don’t make it to the show then you just might miss out on the event of your life. Can’t wait to set my feet on the hallowed ground called Spain. Hammers Up.
Mark The Shark Shelton
Manilla Road
