MARILLION

Brave has been one of the most acclaimed Marillion album from the start in fact, it used to be even more acclaimed back in the days when the 1980s Marillion sounded dated and this still didn't. Naturally, Brave has begun to sound a little dated itself, while the 1980s Marillion has almost turned kind of fresh. Anyway, this one was a brave album, as it introduced a new kind of Marillion that had left the 1980s and Fish's ghost behind, instead presenting us a new progressive rock hybrid that was recognisably 1990s.

The opening "Bridge" doesn't really get going, but the following "Living With the Big Lie" and "Runaway" are already better. Then there is the lengthy "Goodbye to All That", which features some nice fragments, but I quickly learned to skip it. "Hard as Love" is not actually my favourite either. Instead, "The Hollow Man" and the 8-minute "The Lap of Luxury" are high quality music, while "Paper Lies" is not much worse. but "The Great Escape" and "Made Again" close the package with a high note. This is a Magnum opus of progressive rock and music and general. Mariilion created this album with a narrative and created It perfectly. 5.0

Released in 1984, 'Brief Encounter' is a five-track EP by British progressive rock band, Marillion. Originally intended for American markets to coincide with their tour of the States and Canada, it would eventually be re-released on CD format as a bonus disc for a re-mastered 'Real to Reel' live album.

The EP features two studio tracks that were previously released as b-sides to various singles, 'Lady Nina' and 'Freaks', which have gone on to their own acclaim as Marillion classics, and the live tracks, although available elsewhere, are still good. In particular, 'Kayleigh' and 'Fugazi' deserve recognition for the excellent performances involved.

Overall, this is a good EP. While nothing remarkable, it's a cool collectable, especially if you have an original vinyl, and at barely 32 minutes in length, is a harmless keepsake for fans.

'Real to Reel' is the first live album by British progressive rock band, Marillion. Released in 1984 and featuring only seven tracks, it shows a band that are only two albums into their career, but already displaying the prowess of a tight-knit unit.

When writing about this album however, I don't really have too much to say. The sound is really good, and the performances are excellent, with particular praise to vocalist Fish, who bellows every note with passion and conviction. Sadly, as it is still early days for the prog rockers, the set list is a little dated by today's standards.

That's not to say that it's bad, but I'm just not likely to ever listen to this. With highlights including 'Assassing', 'Cinderella Search', and a fantastic rendition of 'Forgotten Sons', it's no doubt a nice memento for a time before Marillion would become huge worldwide superstars. But really, considering the absolute wealth of material the band has produced by now, this is nothing more than a nice collectable for fans.

Script for a Jester's Tear is a strong debut album from the neo-prog group Marillion that succeeds in foreshadowing the traits the band would employ in their magnum opus, Misplaced Childhood. The instrumental arrangements are sufficiently dense for most prog fans while even those like myself who aren't diehard fans of the genre can still find this a relativley accessible album. Most of the melodies here are keyboard or synth driven though there are some that feature more prominent lead guitar parts that could be more appealing to fans of the bands later works.

The album starts off well with the classic title track and the more straightforward "He Knows You Know". "He Knows You Know" might hold up better if it didn't feature the bizarre telephone sequence at the end but it's a small criticism. "The Web" through "Chelsea Monday" are too slow developing for my tastes but I'll concede that each track features an interesting instrumental portion and the playful synth line thorughout "Garden Party" keeps my attention. The final track, "Forgotten Sons" is more in the mold of "He Knows You Know" both in terms of how much guitar is present and the odd lyrical choices. What's missing here is the continuity of a story that showcases Fish's lyrical capabilities. This feature is what won me over on Misplaced Childhood and it is noticeably absent here. Still, this is an excellent album whose minor flaws don't impede enjoyment of the album. 4.0 this defiantly gives this six piece their sound.

Review Nº 881

It's impossible to talk about neo-prog and not talk about Marillion. They're a British prog rock band that was formed in Aylesbury, UK. They're one of the biggest names in progressive rock music and are perhaps the main responsible for the style's survival in the 80's when punk rock movement and the new wave dominated almost the entire music scene.

Marillion is divided into two phases. The first was with Fish, where the music is directed around his poetic and sometimes fanciful lyrics, which sounds a lot like Peter Gabriel. The band achieved their most successful in that phase, artistically, progressively and commercially. After four studio albums, Fish leaves the band and was replaced by Steve Hogarth, where the band introduced a new more oriented towards radio friendly style, although they still have an air of depression in their music. But regardless of which stage we are talking about, the band has significant works to offer.

"Brave" is the seventh studio album of Marillion and that was released in 1994. The line up on the album is Steve Hogarth (lead and backing vocals, keyboards and percussion), Steve Rothery (guitars), Mark Kelly (backing vocals and keyboards), Pete Trewavas (backing vocals and basses) and Ian Mosley (drums and percussion). The album had also the participation of Tony Halligan (Uillean pipes) and of The Liverpool Philharmonic (cellos and flutes), as guests.

With "Holidays In Eden", Marillion couldn't reach a wider audience and had turned away their faithful fans. So, they thought it was time to go back to their roots and make a more progressive album. "Brave" is a conceptual album based on a news story that Steve Hogarth heard on the radio about a girl who was taken to police prison after being found wandering the Severn Bridge. She didn't know who she was or where she came from and refused to speak. This inspired him to write a fictional story about this girl and what could have led to her being on Severn Bridge in this state. "Brave" explores the conceptual issue in an elegant and well executed way, providing a taste of the band's potential.

The keyboards are the show really on this album showing a "resurrected" Mark Kelly, whose role had diminished in importance since Fish's departure, Steve Rothery's guitar is present throughout and always fills the songs very well and Pete Trewavas and Ian Mosley form a solid rhythm support base. But, Steve Hogarth is also a big name on this album where his vocals are superb and temperamental. If in any time we have doubted about his abilities, we must listen to the album and at once see him live in the editions released on video in which the band plays "Brave" in full.

"Brave" cuts across all the facets of the Marillion's career, but with a greater emphasis on a mix of the two first studio albums of Hogarth's era, "Seasons End" and "Holidays In Eden", plus a immense dose of inspiration and in a more progressive approach. "Brave" is an album with eleven tracks, where some of them are broken down into several parts with separate names, "Goodbye To All That" and "The Great Escape". Besides them, we have some tracks that are like passages made to allow the listener to immerse themselves in the album's mood. In them, the shine is on account of the great Mark Kelly and his synthesizers. "Brave" starts with the atmospheric "Bridge", one of the most ambient songs on the album. It's followed by "Living With The Big Lie" one of the best pieces on the album with great music and good lyrics. This is a dense, bright and emotional track. "Run Way" is a very beautiful and melodramatic ballad. It has a great guitar solo. "Goodbye To All That" is a fantastic and very dense progressive song that revolves around intense a space atmospheres and with an extremely accessible melody, but without losing its essence. "Hard As Love" is the first hardest song on the album with an excellent solo synth, plus great guitars and powerful vocals. "The Hollow Man" is a semi-acoustic, a really nice change of pace and atmosphere after the previous rock song. "Alone Again Into The Lap Of Luxury" is beautiful, transforming from a great rock melody with a memorable chord progression to a dark ambient sound. "Paper Lies" is like "Hard As Love" a hard rock song that shows the rock side of the band. The title track is another atmospheric mood piece, mostly an ambient track. "The Great Escape" is a great track, one of the greatest works in the band's history, such the emotion it brings. With the ballad "Made Again" the album closes very sweetly.

Conclusion: "Brave" isn't a unanimous album in terms of fans and critics. But, for me, it's a very interesting work, one of the best in Hogarth's era. In reality, "Brave" is a unique album, not only in Marillion's back catalogue, but in the realm of rock music in general. Marillion may never have been the first choice of the usual prog rock heads, yet their fan base remains the most rabidly loyal and in "Brave" they demonstrated that you don't always have to be cool to release a jaw-dropping album. As "Brave" is such a very cohesive album, a conceptual album where all tracks are somehow linked together, it's difficult to pick out individual tracks as highlights. In reality, Marillion has great albums in both phases, but I'm still rooting for the band to produce something again in this format in Hogarth's phase, another concept work.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)

Marillion have gone ahead and given This Strange Engine a very similar deluxe edition treatment to those previously received by the first 8 albums they put out through EMI. This Strange Engine, of course, represents the start of their independent era, and perhaps it's notable then that the two-CD live show bundled in this time comes from the legendary US tour which was the result of enthusiastic American fans chipping in to make it financially viable, kicking off the band's now-historic role in cultivating early forms of online crowdfunding.

There's also a "live bootleg" of an Utrecht gig on the accompanying Blu-Ray; this has soundboard-quality audio set to less-than-professional footage, and captures a gig where unfortunately Steve Hogarth's voice was shot, meaning that the band are hardly at the top of their form.

As for the album itself, it quite simply has never sounded better. Mind you, it's never sounded that much worse either - it's a mild tightening-up, not a game-changing remix like that enjoyed in 2018 by its follow-up, Radiation.

This album is just alright for me. This is Marillion's second attempt at a more commercial prog rock setting the guidelines for neo - prog. The reason for the low rating is the constant grating drums with way to much reverb. It's like they are trying to make up for having a bad drummer. If they weren't so large and important in the mix I wouldn't have a problem but they have this gross overproduced garbage sound that makes me feel sick. Each song has emotional and dark lyrics sung by their obviously Peter Gabriel Singer, Fish, but unlike Gabriel, Fish just mopes about the state of the world and begs for us to fix it for him. Maybe if you're lucky he'll sing a concept piece about his mean girlfriend or something. On occasion an interesting organ solo will try and rip you away from the vile drums but its never enough. I enjoy the lyrical content and the instrumentation but the way they went about producing it completely ruins it for me.

So after being extremely impressed with Marillion's first album with new singer Steve Hogarth, Seasons End, I was looking foreward to future releases, considering that at least some of the more negatively-recieved albums may have been in disappointment over the loss of Fish. I welcomed that loss, as he never diversified the band's content. With him out of the way, the greoup could expand their horizons. Or at least, that's what I was hoping for. This is an almost entirely different album from Seasons End. Not only is the prog rock almost entirely betrayed for radio rock, but they don't even bother to justify these OK songs with any real melodies in the instrumentation. They're too few to even put into a short-term memory of the album. There's a good deal of the arena stuff fore you, like "big music" and AOR, but none of it's fully developed, so it never manages to stand with bands like Magnum or U2. You'd think once the 80's passed, the bigname prog bands would STOP selling out, but apparently, even neo-prog bands like Marillion can fall victim to this...

There are many of us music reviewers who can't stand it when a band betrays their classic sound or when a major player in a band leaves, and then there are those of us who will accept the change if it's necessary. In this instance, it was the departure of England's most obvious Peter Gabriel wannabe, Fish. With the new AOR-oriented vocals of Steve Hogarth in play, it was time for Marillion to try something new. And is this a good thing? Well, for most neo- prog fans, Marillion is practically the go-to band for the rawest quality and for an introduction. But I treat all genres equally. I have favorites, but I never judge them unfairly towards other genres. And in this case, all Marillion is to me is a very catchy pop group that kept rewriting the same damn pop songs every album during the whole Fish era.

Seasons End might take slack for the chance in sound, but after four albums of the exact same thing which drew me away from neo-prog in the first place (after 12 years I haven't even gotten to 30 neo albums yet), I welcome it with arms more open than the range. Right from the glorious intro, The King of Sunset Town, I was taken in by the more progressive instrumental behavior and its raw beauty. Throughout the whole eight minutes, I was thinking to myself, "It's about time Marillion started acting like a prog band." This proves that Fish's whole vision for the band was, "What would Genesis sound like today is Gabriel didn't leave?" But of course, there's some room for hard- hitting AOR with songs like The Uninvited Guest and Holloway Girl. This gives us a stronger taste of what we had before, the poppier melodies but with a stylistic choice of bands such as Magnum. And as a man who believes On a Storyteller's Night almost rivals the Boston debut, I am not complaining about this. The album will also take time to soak in its atmospheres with the beautiful but potentially overlong titular track. And I even get a little jazziness in Berlin, and jazziness is something neo-prog needs. Do the smooth jazz aspects right, and it's perfect for the subgenre.

This is the Marillion album I wanted: a multi-faceted one. With a more serious and less obvious style, Marillion have finally distanced themselves from the Genesis sound and took some time to expand. I suppose the legal issues that caused Fish's departure were just what the band needed to finally expand their horizons. Seasons End is the more intriguing album of the classic era, and it gives me hope for the albums after this one, even going as far as to potentially ignore the negative reviews.

Review Nº 871

"4 Albums" is a very special compilation from Marillion. It was released in 2011. It's an economic package that includes four studio works of the band, "Misplaced Childhood" of 1985, "Clutching At Straws" of 1987, "Seasons End" of 1989 and "Holidays In Eden" of 1991, on only one package. This is an interesting compilation. It can be a worth purchase if you don't have the four original albums yet. It means that, if you buy "4 Albums", you can save on money and space. However, for those who have already the four albums, "4 Albums" only can be a nice addition for your collection.

As I've already reviewed these four albums previously and individually on Progarchives, in a more extensive way, I'm not going to do it again. So, if you are interested to know, in more detail, what I wrote about them before, I invite you to read those my reviews. However, in here I'm going to write something about them in a more short way. So, of course, I'm not going to analyze them as extensively as I made before, but I'm only going to make a global appreciation of them.

"Misplaced Childhood": Besides be their most commercially successful album, "Misplaced Childhood" is their best studio album and is also one of the best studio albums made by any prog band. Even the former drummer of Dream Theater, Mike Portnoy commented this was the best Marillion's album. With "Misplaced Childhood", Marillion proved they weren't a clone of Genesis and reached the status of be considered one of the best prog rock bands. "Misplaced Childhood", put Marillion at the same quality level of Genesis, Yes, Pink Floyd, Gentle Giant, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Van Der Graaf Generator, Camel, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Rush and Dream Theater. It put them as one of the greatest and most influential prog bands. If you don't know the band yet and want to buy a Marillion's albums, this is the best.

"Clutching At Straws": "Clutching At Straws" is an excellent album, probably a more mature work than the other three previous studio albums. The lyrics and compositions are more emotional and dramatic as ever and the band found their musical identity and balance. It's the last break with Genesis' influence. I think there is some truth in these. I think that "Clutching At Straws" is, in a certain way, more a Fish's album than a Marillion's album. Lyrically, the character was inspired by Fish's life experiences, and it has everything to do with his personal life in those times, with his problems with the alcoholism and drugs. Musically, it's also closer to the music that Fish would make on his solo works. Despite "Clutching At Straws" be a great studio album, it isn't as good as "Script For A Jester's Tear" or "Misplaced Childhood" are, it remains an excellent work representing the last contribution of a great artist who left the band by the front door.

"Seasons End": This first album of Marillion without Fish worked well. When we are listening to "Seasons End", we can conclude that the group recorded a beautiful album, rich in melodies, with a meticulous guitar work and impeccable instrumentation. Here, Marillion managed to survive of the replacing a revered front man mainly yielding good results. And although as a whole it doesn't quite manage to reach the same musical peaks as reached by some of the material from the Fish era it will, to people who give it a thorough listen, prove a strong and worthy follow on. Despite I always had some problems with Hogarth's era in Marillion, "Seasons End" remains one of my favorite Marillion's albums, even if I still sort of sorted it in my head under an imaginary other band's name. This is a band looking for a new beginning.

"Holidays In Eden": "Holidays In Eden" is one of the most commercial and poppy offspring in Marillion's career. At times it's hard to believe that the rhythm section is the same that we admired and praised in "Fugazi" and "Misplaced Childhood". Kelly has been held in check, we miss his virtuoso's solos and poignant piano laps. The cuts made to Rothery's solos are too evident in some cases, with the duration reduced to a minimum. The voice of Hogarth could only emerge, very suitable for charts, and the lyrics has been taken a step back compared to "Seasons End", they're much more oriented towards romanticism, neglecting demanding themes. I think the band realized this direction was leading them nowhere. Fortunately, they got right back to where they belonged with their next studio album "Brave".

Conclusion: After what I wrote before and despite I have mentioned that "4 Albums" is only important for those who don't own the four original studio works or for the hardest collector fans of Marillion, in reality, this compilation album is very interesting. It comprises the two last studio albums of Fish's era and the two first studio albums of Hogarth's era. However, it isn't a very uniform compilation album in terms of quality. If the two albums that belong to Fish's era, "Misplaced Childhood" and "Clutching At Straws" are both two excellent works, mainly the first one, we cannot say the same about the two works from Hogarth's era. It's true that "Season's End" is also an excellent album but "Holidays In Eden" is clearly weaker. Anyway and as a whole, we can say that "4 Albums" is a very good compilation album. In a way, it can do a nice picture of both worlds in Marillion's career. If you haven't those works, it can be a nice purchase.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)