Crystal Logic was never a commercial hit, but it and its successors in Manilla Road’s discography cast a long shadow on the history of heavy metal, both through their almost unbelievably ardent fans and through their influences on later metal bands like Brocas Helm, Virgin Steele, and pretty much any band that uses “barbarian” themes or imagery. It is an album that could have only been made in 1983, when heavy metal was still finding its identity as a new genre and not merely a style of rock music and fantasy roleplaying games and groups were proliferating across the United States and creating a new and distinctly American fantasy aesthetic that would sweep across the world in the later ‘80s and through the ‘90s. And Manilla Road, much more than most other metal bands, understood what the dungeons and dragons and elves and goblins’ real power was—to uncover truths about society, the human condition, and ourselves on an emotional, subconscious level, to reach people who would never be impressed by a tome of abstruse theory translated from French and studded with $50 words. Crystal Logic is not an album for everyone, or even an album for every metalhead. It’s a challenging listen full of ugly sounds, blatant geekery, and bent song structures that will likely not grab you on your first or second listen. But if it does click with you, this album will resonate with you forever, and still hold your attention after hundreds of listens. It will never be popular, but it will likely never be forgotten, either, unless Shelton’s dreams of eschaton do indeed come to pass and sweep our industrial world away to be replaced by another, maybe with humans, maybe not, that we cannot even begin to imagine. Until then, I’ll never tire of being lost in Necropolis.
