RADIATION

Where a superb band fails to deliver a good album, that's what Radiation is. With the great Brave album the band had set an extremely high standard and with This strange engine, Radiation and Marillion.com they never came close to that desired quality. But where 'Engine' and .com certainly had their magic moments, Radiation altogether fails. The songs are remarkbly poor in melody and production, they show a significant lack of ideas and they show for sure that Marillion should never play a real blues song (Born to run is só dreadful!). There are some nice moments though: 'These chains is good', as well as 'Three minute boy' and, especially, 'Now she never knows' which really sends me shivers down the spine. Apart from the aforementioned, horrible 'Born to run' I really dislike 'Answering machine' (Marillion goes pop!) and 'Cathedral wall' (just a dreadful chunk of noise). Fortunately the album closes with the fine 'A few words for the dead' in which the band proves that it still had the ability to write real great songs. And they proved again with albums like Anoraknophobia and Marbles. For a good introduction to this absolutely great band choose one of these albums and just skip Radiation. It's really for collectors only.