HELLWELL "BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES OF SIN" SHADOW KINGDOM RECORDS
HELLWELL is the new side project of MANILLA ROAD's lead singer Mark Shelton. "BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES OF SIN" is the bands debut album. This new project has a kind of throwback sound to earlier MANILLA ROAD releases. The music is done in a style of Traditional Heavy Metal with touches of Doom & Power Metal all thrown in the mix. The album has a more dark and Fantasy / Horror type theme to the lyrics kind of in the vein of H.P. Lovecraft. There are elements of Thrash Metal present mostly in the guitar sound, but only in the faster more aggressive arrangements. At other times the guitars tend to have a clean crisp almost polished sound like you would find in Power Metal. The addition of keyboards also gives the band a Progressive / Power Metal vibe. The keys are not real dark sounding, but more Fantasy sounding. Mark Shelton's vocals are a combination of melodic clean Power / Traditional Heavy Metal vocals and some gruff and gritty Thrash Metal styled vocals. HELLWELL is a bit different from what fans of MANILLA ROAD would be used to, but the same influences and elements are present that fans of Mark's main band will still get into what he is doing here. Very cool, Progressive / Power Metal tinged with Doom & Thrash Metal all through out!