Gates of Fire is another concept album from Manilla Road. Instead of one big concept to focus on, Gates of Fire tells three different stories with them being based on The Frost Giant's Daughter, Virgil's Aeneid and the Spartan King Leonidas and the battle of Thermopylae. The album shows a strong variety including the album opener Riddle of Steel that has a vibe from Open the Gates era, Behind the Veil and Epitaph to the King as acoustic ballads and some challenges in terms of length with Betrayal and the whole of tracks 4-6 covering Virgil's Aeneid. There's a whole lot this album offers and you will need to give it time for both the music itself and the conceptual themes.
The Fall of Illiam stands as the longest track Manilla Road have recorded yet. With this song, Mark Shelton makes the way with an acoustic guitar with Cory Christner on the drums. Christner is quite a drummer and you will acknowledge this when the distorted doom metal guitars kicks in. The drums stand out very well and show some technical aspects to them. The first three verses use the same musical structure to them and although the flow of music usually works if it's repeated just once, the triple occurrance makes a better use of endurance as well as giving a really good feel of the sound. The song makes it way to a three minute solo and you'd think by the last minute it would start to get tedious but the solo segment doesn't feel boring nor tedious at all. Mark Shelton creates a sweet melody that would sure require a lot of memorization if this was ever played live.
The second half of the song shows yet more amazing musicianship from the band where Mark Shelton takes on another intense riff. Cory Christner shows a lot more aggression to the drums and a most of his drum kit in full use. Harvey Patrick even has his bass louder and clear in the second half. Like the earlier part of the song, this part of the song structure is repeated a few times and again gives you a lot of time to absorb the fantastic moments from the song. For a 15 minute song, time sure goes quick with this masterpiece. It's an endurance for a Manilla Road song but the band as whole made the lengthy song very effective. This is easily a top 5 contender for the best songs ever recorded by Shelton & co.
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