Hail to all ye brethren of the Hammer,

We have returned triumphantly from our first little mini-tour for 2012. We are calling all of the touring that we do this year the Roadkill 2012 Tour. We had a great time playing in Finland, Sweden and England. The audiences were fantastic and I was so surprised at the young age of some of our newer fans. It is great to see that we are still able to bring new blood into the Manilla camp. The love and respect was abundant and we are all so very honored to have had the chance to play in several places we have never been before. There are some videos taken by fans on youtube already and my fb page has been blowing up so thank you all for the great amount of support that you all are putting out there for us. It is not even close to over for this year. We will be headlining the Warriors of Metal festival in Ohio in about a week and then returning to Midgard Sound Labs to record the drum tracks for the next album with Neudi. Then we will do a long overdue show in Wichita Kansas at The Port Of Wichita on July 6th. We will take a bit of a break from touring then to work on finishing up the new album. It appears we will be adding another tour stop this year though. I believe we shall be playing at the Noctis Festival in Calgary, Alberta, Canada on the weekend of September 28th & 29th. More information on this date very soon. We will also be headlining the Up The Hammers festival in Athens, Greece in October. The shows we just finished went extremely well and I am so impressed with my band mates for enduring the many plane rides and loss of sleep for that leg of the tour. It was brutal. I swear we were not at the Muskelrock festival for more than 20 minutes and then we were on the stage. It’s funny though…I can’t wait to do it again. Even though it is way too much traveling and not enough sleep it is still worth it every time we get up on stage and crank up the sound. Once again we have been honored by our fans who have allowed us to do what we love the most and that is playing epic metal the Manilla Road way. There will also be some new merchandise showing up on this site very soon. We will have new tour shirts and more new re-issues from High Roller and Shadow Kingdom. So keep an eye out for that stuff right here at manillaroad.net. The first Hellwell release “Beyond the Boundaries of Sin” will be out on High Roller August 17th 2012 and the Shadow Kingdom CD version that will be available in the US will be out right around the same time. I don’t know if any of you are into the internet radio sites but just for information sake I would like to let you know that Pandora and RDIO are both carrying Manilla Road music now. I know that Playground of the Damned and The Deluge are getting airplay already. As all of the reissues come out there will be more MR music available on these type of sites. Of course they are on I-tunes also. So all is going well for the Road and for Hellwell right now and we are looking forward to finishing out the rest of this year with a bang (your head). New Manilla album in the works…New Hellwell album out soon…More touring and live shows…New friends and new places…Life is good in the Manillan Empire. Thanks to all of you for your undying support and of course May The Lords Of Light Be With You.

Up The Hammers & Down The Nails

Shark

The moon is just about right for boiling up some more magik from the Manilla Road cauldron. There is a lot to talk about right now so I will just get to it. First of all you should check out the merchandise that has been added. We have several new reissue CDs from Shadow Kingdom that have just arrived. Also reissue LPs from High Roller. And for you collectors we have some of the original Iron Glory and Battle Cry releases on CD as well. Also some colored vinyl from High Roller. We now have a new version of the flying Bat Jack shirt sporting the Mystification name. That was when we came up with Bat Jack. During the Mystification days. If you did not know, we recorded Mystification in Al Green’s studio in Memphis, Tennessee. Even got to meet and hang out with the gospel blues master himself for a bit. You would not think that a band like us would ever be recording in Al Green’s studio but it was an adventure to say the least. We are also drawing up a design for a new tour shirt that we will offer at our live shows this summer. We are calling the tour Roadkill 2012. We have an album titled Roadkill Live but that was actually recorded while we were touring the Mystification album. So I thought we should have a Roadkill tour finally and now was as good a time as ever. We are not doing a lot of live dates this year due to all the recording that is going on. But the shows we are doing will be special ones for sure. You can check out all the dates and places on the Tour Dates tab on this site. We will be returning to Finland for another show and I can’t wait for that. The last time we played in Finland was a blast and the audience was fantastic. We will be doing our first ever show in Sweden at the Muskelrock festival. Ah the land of Frost Giants…I can’t wait. My grandmother was Swedish and very proud of it. We are also doing another first timer with a show in London, England. I have been to England and Scotland with my daughter but this will be the first time that Manilla Road has ever played there. So this is going to be a special mini-tour for us and hopefully for all who come and see us. We sort of rap this little tour up by Headlining the Friday night show of the Warriors of Metal festival in Ohio, USA. Helstar will be headlining the Saturday night show. So that will be a special event for us as well because we have toured with Helstar before and are good friends with them. It will be great to be back together again. And then we will go back into Midgard Sound Labs in Wichita to track the drums for the next MR album that we are already working on. We will most likely be doing a live show in Wichita the weekend after the 4th of July at The Port Of Wichita Club. We have not put that date up yet because we are not sure if it will be Friday or Saturday night yet. Keep watching this site for more information about the Wichita date. Also later in the year on October 14th we will be headlining the Up The Hammers festival in Athens, Greece. Shows in Greece are always special to us. Hell we have always been received like kings wherever we have been in Europe. It ‘s a great place to tour and many thanks to all of you who make it that way for us. I’m really looking forward to the show in Ohio also because we have not played much in the states over the last few years. We plan on doing much more touring in the states and Europe in 2013.

Just a little bit of information about the recording situation for you now. The first Hellwell album is finished. We just got through mastering the project in Cornerstone Studio with Steve Falke and I’m just really pumped about this release. It will be coming out this year on High Roller and Shadow Kingdom records. Alex Von Wieding is doing the art for the project and I can’t wait for this one to get out to all of you. This band is really like Manilla Road’s evil twin. A little different but with tinges of my writing style thrown into the mix. We are all really happy with the production on this one so I am very interested to see what people think about it. There are guest appearances by Bryan and Josh from MR on this project. I guess I will go ahead and announce the name of the album now. It is to be called Beyond the Boundaries of Sin. So definitely keep a look out for this one. If you like MR then you will most likely like Hellwell. As for Manilla Road I can’t tell you a title for the new album yet but I can tell you that we have seven songs written for it at this time. I still have a couple more songs to write for this one and I’m bound and determined to make one of them a big epic. This will be an album that is truly important to me for it will be the first project recorded with our new drummer Neudi. He is a master of the kit and I have had great times playing with him so far. I’m really looking forward to this tour and the recording sessions with him. Sales are good and we have been seeing some really good write ups about the band on different sites and mags. We are about to embark on some more touring in the lands of my forefathers. Hellwell is about to come out. Manilla Road is recording a new album with a new and great drummer and we have a whole bunch of new merchandise for you Manilla Maniacs to get your mitts on. Seems like the kingdom is doing well. So check out all the new stuff and come and see the Road live on tour this year. If you have ever been to one of our shows then you know that it will be a blast. So Blessed Be to all and of course thanks to all of you for your undying support of the band and epic metal itself. Up The Hammers and Down The Nails.

Shark

Hail to all ye Brethren of the Hammer,

It is official now, Manilla Road will be headlining the Friday June 29th show at the Warriors of Metal festival in Ohio. Helstar will be headlining the Saturday show on June 30th at the WOM also. This should be a great time with lots of great bands. It has been since 1988 or 89 that Manilla Road have played in Ohio so it will be good to return. We also are confirmed for playing at the Muskelrock festival in Sweden on June 2nd with a show in Finland the night before. More details about these shows will be up on our tour dates page soon. We also tentatively scheduled to headline the Up The Hammers festival in Athens in October of 2012 which we will give you more information about that also in the near future. We are planning to do a little more touring as well but at the same time we will be recording a new Manilla Road album with Andreas coming over to Midgard Sound Labs to do his parts. So it appears the Road will be having a busy year and we are all looking forward to raising the hammers high.

Down The Nails

Shark