BRAVE

After recently discovering and becoming a big fan of Fish era Marillion, I was excited to hear BRAVE, the supposed zenith of Hogarth Marillion. Well judging by this release, the two eras of Marillion are about as strikingly different and dividing as the two eras of Genesis. All of the magic, variation, and raw emotion of Marillion seems to be lost with Fish's departure. The albums marches on through the same melancholy atmosphere for a hour, and it becomes tiresome. All the songs seem to share the same gloom and depression as each other, and it eventually begins to wear on you as a listener. Overall, the music hear just fails to impress or challenge. They play it relatively safe and the music is kept simple, more like highly melodic, atmospheric rock than prog. It really is just boring more than bad or anything else that can come to mind.

With all this said Hogarth actually has his moments as a singer. If he sang on a few tracks I'd be a fan of his, but after an album full of material his voice really wears on me. He just doesn't carry the same quirkiness, drama, and above all, emotion that Fish did. He also suffers from a rather annoying enunciation problem. I couldn't really speak to the lyrical competence of the album due to Hogarth's mumbling.