Warthur Manilla Road sat out most of the 1990s, with Mark the Shark attempting to put the project to bed after 1990's The Courts of Chaos and then, after the record company insisted on releasing his solo Circus Maximus album as a Manilla Road release, forcing the issue by taking a nearly decade-long hiatus from music. In retrospect, this hiatus feels like it was a decidedly wise move - the musical scene in the 1990s had moved on from the more fantasy-friendly days of 1980s metal, especially in the US, and taking this time off both allowed Mark to ride out this hostile period and also recharge his creative batteries.

Atlantis Rising is a return to the style of Manilla Road before influences of thrash metal and other extreme metal styles began creeping in, which is appropriate enough since it's a bit of a sequel to that release. Thematically, it's a mashup of a bunch of different mythologies beloved by classic metal bands - the storyline has Atlantis returning to the surface of the sea at the behest of great Cthulhu himself, in order to do battle with the Norse gods! In the hands of a less capable band, this would be absurd nonsense - but Manilla Road have the D&D metal chops to make it a gloriously over-the-top epic and enormous fun. A true return to form.