We met Marillion at the beginning of the 80s and saw how they became one of the most popular symphonic and progressive rock bands of the decade when they released "Misplaced Childhood" in 1985 and it was played everywhere with hits that would later become in classics, such as "Kayleigh" and "Lavender". Two years later "Clutching At Straws" would arrive, another great album with hits like "Incommunicado" and "Sugar Mice", and in 1988 they announced that Fish, their then vocalist, was leaving the group.
History indicates that when an established band is left without the original singer, it is destined to fail. I must admit I thought that when Fish left the band. The strength, warmth and sweetness of his voice, his imprint, even the clumsiness in his movements were impossible to replace, besides his lyrics and the stories that were narrated there went with him. I must say in my favor that I was not wrong, Fish was irreplaceable if we expected them to look for someone with similar characteristics, but Marillion was not destined to fail, with the incorporation of Steve Hogarth they changed, they did not bet on the same thing but on something different within the same musical line, the songs "No One Can" and "Cover My Eyes (Pain And Heaven)", both from 1991, were proof of this.
We arrived at 2022 and continue talking about Fish's stage is inevitable, with him they released only 4 albums and with Hogarth 15, but with Fish they achieved fame, press recognition, massiveness, great record sales and tours. global. It's like talking about Genesis and not mentioning the stage in which Peter Gabriel was a leader and singer. It simply cannot.
Marillion has just released their nineteenth album "An Hour Before It's Dark", an album as beautiful as it is dramatic. There are themes that are recurring, or if you prefer common or shared between different artists, and they are the pandemic and the climate crisis. All that enormous load that both topics imply surround the climate of "An Hour Before It's Dark" but without making explicit mention of it. In the "Care" suite towards the end of the album, he mentions the true angels on earth in the four movements of the piece, and the final movement clearly alludes to health personnel:
"The angels of this world are not on the walls of the churches.
The angels of this world are not made of bronze or stone.
The heroes in this world are working while we all sleep."
"An Hour Before It's Dark" has the magic of five musicians who have been working together since 1989 and achieve an unusual level, a transformative chemistry, they achieve alchemy.
On this album there are no single songs conceived strictly as "the new hit to go up on the platforms", it is an album thought out, elaborated as a whole that includes four suites that in some cases when a movement is in crescendo and is about to reach the point maximum, suddenly the following movement begins producing a cut, simulating to truncate the previous movement, as it happens in "Reprogram The Gene".
"An Hour Before It's Dark" is an album to listen to in a row, and once it's finished play it again, and again, and again, and again.
No album is usually perfect, or almost none, Marillion seems to have found the formula to make it happen and shares it an hour before dark.
