This was not really a Manilla Road project but Black Dragon released it under the MR name in order to sell more units. Since it was released as Manilla Road I will go ahead and give you my point of view on it here. When I broke up Manilla Road I never had any intention of leaving the music scene. So I put together a new line-up of musicians to do my first solo project with. After working with Aaron and Andy for awhile I noticed that we were all working together very well at writing songs and that it was sounding more like a band and less like my solo project all the time. It was turning out that I was not going to sing lead vocals on every song and that the influences of Andy and Aaron and myself were being mixed into the songs in a very strange fused way. So we decided to name the band Circus Maximus and throw away the idea of it being a Mark Shelton solo project. We never meant it to be a Manilla Road album for we never even thought of ourselves as Manilla Road. Even after the album came out on BD as Manilla Road we still did all of our gigs under the name Circus Maximus. I thought that the musicianship on this album was fantastic. Both Aaron and Andy opened my eyes to many styles of music that I had never investigated. I also did the same for them for they came from a more progressive music style than I. I forced them into learning how to play heavier and faster than they ever had before. I know alot of MR fans don't like this album but I do believe that some of my best guitar work is on this project. I think that the writing is very cool and that the eclectic nature of the album was like a breath of fresh air to me at the time. Aaron and Andy were high school friends and so there was no fighting within the ranks of the band like there had been towards the last with Randy and Scott. They were both clowns on stage and they were very fun to play live with. Circus was not really a metal album and it was never intended on being anything other than what were wanted to do at the time. We never set out to play a specific style of music with that band. It was more a fusion style than anything else. Aaron is one of the finest drummers I have ever worked with and Andy is the best vocalist that I have ever worked with. Andy is also one of the finest bass players I have ever known. All in all I was very happy with this project and I think it is a very misunderstood album because of it being called Manilla Road. Favorite songs are Forbidden Zone, In Gein We Trust, No Touch, Throne Of Blood and Spider.

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