Manilla Road – Playground Of The Damned

What can I say about the glory of Manilla Road? They are one of the greatest epic/heavy metal bands of all time, they have released legendary albums that make you feel great and excited every time you listen to them, and they never sold out but they always stayed true to their roots. They had a lot of difficulties like split-ups, reunions, members leaving the band and so on but those difficulties didn’t stop them from releasing very good music. Their new album is out and it is called “Playground Of The Damned”.

Most of the songs in “Playground Of The Damned” are a very good combination of doom and epic metal. This album creates very strong epic feelings to the listener and it is an album that will take you to “it’s world” while you are listening to it; if you listen to this album carefully you will forget that you are in your house or wherever you may be, but you will feel like you are in the Manilla Road universe. It is a very doomy album but it is combined very good with the epic music, feeling, lyrics and atmosphere of Manilla Road.  The vocals are very good,  the rhythm section plays very tight and in a couple of times sounds killer and the guitars are also great; Mark Shelton is a guarantee! The songs “Art Of War” and “Fire Of Ashurbanipal” will travel you with their music, “Jackhammer” (this song has a great riff and, in general, it is one of my personal favourites of the record) and “Brethen Of the Hammer” will make you headbang and drink beers in the name of Mark Shelton, and the title track and “Into the Maelstorm” are also very good songs that I like them more every time I listen to them. I didn’t like a lot “Gindhouse” and “Abattoir de la Mort”, but they are not bad songs; I just think that they are a level below the other songs of the album. “Playground Of The Damned” is not an easy record to hear. You need to listen to it a couple of times in order to be able to aprecciate it and understand how good it is.

The production of the album is low budget but it is great. The old-school sound of the album fits perfectly with the music of Manilla Road and I think that if they had a very clean production, the album wouldn’t have sounded as good as it sounds now.

Overall, I would say that “Playground Of The Damned” is a very good album. You need to listen to it a couple of times in order to understand how good it actually is but it totally deserves this time and patience!