OUT OF THE BOX

I don't know any Progressive Rock bands that have produced about 100th releases in their career. Marillion has done it with all their live releases but excluding the ep, singles, compilations. In this weekend shows, they played the complete "Anoraknophobia" in the disk 1 with some classics. It's a bit of a surprise to choose this one because it is not a "classic" album. There are some excellent songs like "Quartz", "This is the 21st Century" and "If My Heart were a Ball it Would roll..." But there is no better song than one of their most progressive rock and titled-track "This Strange Engine". The music of Marillion became more accessible with the departure of Fish and the songs have often the same progressions starting as a ballad to switch into a full rock mode in the second part, with a beautiful guitar solo from Steve Rothery. The songs in the Hogarth era will never have the same impact as the ones of the first periods, but the band still manage to put some quality music. The second disk is the main event not only because they played the complete and stronger album "Marbles", but because of the stunning visuals with projections, lasers, and light show. We have some great songs here like "Invisible Man", and "Oceans Cloud". The third disk is a set-list of many singles including 40 minutes of the Fish period. So, no surprise and no epics songs. Those songs were played in chronological order and it's a couple of songs from the "Brave" album that sound to me as good as the singles from the Fish era. So this is another triple set of good quality from the band, and if some of past Marillion videos requires only limited viewing, I will put this one a lot more in my player.