Hail to all ye Brethren of the Hammer,

Shark here with another installment of From the Shark’s Mouth where I get to ramble on senselessly but hopefully not to the point where you all realize how much of a split personality I have. I have not posted for a while so I guess I should catch everyone up to speed that is not in the know. So fasten your seat belts and here we go.

2012 was a pretty good year for Manilla Road. We did several successful tour legs in many places we had never been before and we recorded the Mysterium album with our new line up, which by the way was a great experience. It has been an honor and a pleasure to tour and work in the studio with these guys.  We played in Finland, Sweden, England, the US, Canada and Greece.  We even made a rare appearance in our own hometown with Neudi on board.  We also showed our German drummer boy what a 112 degree cowboy summer is like in Kansas haha. In the midst of all this Hellwell released it’s first debut album Beyond the Boundaries of Sin which made it in the top 30 best metal releases of 2012 on the Rhapsody charts and has been received by one and all very well indeed. My thanks. Manilla Road signed a new label deal with Golden Core records / ZYX in Europe. By the end of the year we had already started writing and recording new material for both the next Hellwell and Manilla Road projects. There were some down moments in the year. Biggest down that came was when we found out that our old friend and past sound engineer for MR, Jay Merhoff, had passed away. Even though we had not been in constant contact for some years it was still quite a surprise. Except for that 2012 was a pretty good year for the Road indeed.

Now we are facing 2013 and it looks like Manilla Road is going to come out with a big bang. Our new album Mysterium will be out in just a few days and so far the response to the promos that were sent out is great. I think there will be no contest about the production on this one friends. And to accompany the release we are doing an acoustic release party in Mannheim, Germany and then the very next night headlining the Metal Assault festival in Wurzburg, Germany along with a great line up of other bands. This show is a special 30th anniversary show for the release of Crystal Logic as well as a coming out for the Mysterium album. And to help us with the Crystal Logic part of the show Rick Fisher himself will be playing drums with us doing the entire Crystal Logic album front to back. After a short interlude and drum change over Neudi will join us for another 2 hours of pure epic metal Manilla style including the entire Open The Gates Album and some new songs from Mysterium as well as more of the loved metal anthems of the Road. It will be a night to remember and one you should not miss. The rest of the year looks really cool on the touring front as well. We will be playing many festivals this year including the Maryland Deathfest, The Chaos in Tejas festival, The Sweden Rock Festival, The  Barroselas Metalfest in Portugal (which will be our first time in Portugal) and many more announcements of shows to come will be made by the end of this month and on into the next months as well. Our management in the US and Europe is working hard to work out tour dates where ever we can right now and it appears that we will be on the road a lot in 2013. Just keep watching our tour dates page on manillaroad.net and you can keep up to date with the latest information about shows to come. I do believe we will also be doing a special Crystal Logic show with Rick Fisher in Wichita Kansas in March.

So I’m really excited about where we have been and where we are going and I can’t think of a better thing to be a part of right now than Manilla Road and Hellwell. We sure would not be in this position without the undying support of our friends and fans and now it seems that even the media is getting behind us. The moral to the story here is fortitude. Don’t give up and stand your ground and you can make the impossible happen. To think that a bunch of Kansas cowboys could ever stir up so much dust is a remarkable event from where I see things. I am writing this as I am getting prepared to get on a plane for Germany and I am feeling better than ever. So looking forward to this first tour stop of the year for us and a chance to play in the circle of light again. Hope to see you all there. Up The Hammers & Down The Nails.

Shark