Interview: Mark "the Shark" Shelton and Bryan "Hellroadie" Patrick, Manilla Road

First of all, Marshabaloosh is the evil deity that makes you stub your toe, step on a nail, makes your wife divorce you, starts world wars and makes it snow heavily on the day of your important job interview. Indeed he's quit the nogoodnik, yet we worship him.

Sounds of Marshabaloosh is the music and entertainment spin off of the Savage Hippie retardo propaganda machine, and for the first installment, I was granted the privilege of interviewing Mark "the Shark" Shelton and Bryan "Hellroadie" Patrick, guitarist/singer/songwriter and singer/roadie for legendary cult metal band Manilla Road. If you don't know 'em, you better wise up, sucker! They've been together in some way, shape or form since 1977 and have released a large and diverse body of work that ranges from heavy, progressive space rock, melodic epic metal, thrash, doom and even 12-string acoustic folky music, whose one uniting factor is Shelton and his penchant for fantasy, science fiction, horror and the occasional philosophical lyrics.

Shelton, Patrick and I spend an hour talking about everything from Manilla Road's music (whoda thunk we'd talk about that?!), their various albums, encounters with other bands, potential label deals, the literature of Robert E. Howard, Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft and the time Manilla Road incited a brawl between Stryper's Christian fan base and their biker one... guess who won...

I wish I had asked Shelton to elaborate on the Riddle Master project and about the legendary Herman Hill riots, but oh well... maybe next time?

Here's a list of all of their albums if you want to check out their stuff, which you should, asshole.

Invasion (1980)

Metal (1982)

Crystal Logic (1983)

Open the Gates (1985)

The Deluge (1986)

Mystification (1987)

Live Roadkill (1988)

Out of the Abyss (1988)

The Courts of Chaos (1990)

The Circus Maximus (1992)

Atlantis Rising (2001)

Mark of the Beast (2002) (recorded 1981)

Spiral Castle (2002)

Gates of Fire (2005)

Voyager (2008)

After Midnight Live (2010) (recorded 1979)

Playground of the Damned (2011)

Mysterium (2013)

The Blessed Curse (2015)

Dreams of Eschaton (2016) (recorded 1981, remaster of Mark of the Beast)

And Mark, if you're reading this, I downloaded all three Heavy Load albums! Thanks for the recommendation!

Edwin Oslan
Savage Hippie Podcast

28th December, 2016

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!