Atlantis Rising is Manilla Road's comeback album after the hiatus in the early 90s. Mark Shelton reformed the band with a whole new lineup featuring Bryan "Hellroadie" Patrick on drums as well as vocals and Mark Anderson on bass. This is Bryan Patrick's debut and his contributions to the band as a vocalist only became greater after this release. Amazingly enough, Hellroadie has the exact same vocal characteristics as Mark Shelton meaning he sounds exactly like the Shark so the introduction of a second vocalist could easily slip through the crack if little to no research was done on the band.
After a 10 year break, Mark Shelton struck back the music industry with this monstrous album. The concept of the album alone instantly marks this album as heavy metal. Atlantis Rising tells the tale of the lost Atlantis re-emerging with a war between the Norse Gods and the Great Old Ones over the continent. If this isn't metal, nothing in this world is! This album comes with a few interludes but it's hard to overlook the great work of this record with the harsh opener Megalodon, the fast and aggressive Siege of Atland and rifftastic tracks including March of the Gods, Decimation and Resurrection.
Starting off with a familiar verse (think Open the Gates' opener Metal Storm), Megalodon strikes with some distorted guitars and still maintains the rough sound productions from the earlier releases but at the same time modernizes it. It's not long until Mark Shelton offers a new flavour of vocals to his music with his very harsh voice. With this combined with the introduction of the concept, you can be sure that he makes the big blue sea so brutal that you wouldn't want to touch a drop from the ocean. The solos find themselves to be the screams of the monsters coming to battle. This only marks the beginning of the return of Atlantis and you can bet the war will not get any easier later on and neither will the music.
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