In January, London based art rockers The Bloody Mallard kicked off the new year by sharing the heavy and complex ‘Subject To Entropy’. A month on, the band have returned with another taster for their upcoming album ‘Realm’.
In the band’s own words, the new single ‘Ceremonious Synapses (ii)’ “signals the most climatic point of the album”. From a listening perspective, it shows the band in a more melodic light than before, but without losing any of their riff-based strengths.
For British progressive and art rock, the relatively short period between March 1973 and December 1974 was particularly fruitful. Roxy Music released ‘For Your Pleasure‘ and ‘Stranded’, Genesis released two of their most ambitious works in ‘Selling England By The Pound’ and ‘The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway’, while King Crimson gave us ‘Larks’ Tongues In Aspic’ and Emerson, Lake & Palmer tipped the scales of self-indulgence with their ‘Brain Salad Surgery’. Meanwhile, Yes continued their long voyage into the epic with the help of ‘Relayer’, and Pink Floyd and Mike Oldfield released albums that would eventually become worldwide all-time best-sellers. Given the quality and love for each of these records, it’s hardly surprising that, in comparison, ‘Turn of The Cards’ – the fourth studio release from British symphonic rock combo Renaissance – hardly ever gets talked about.
The sound of the third Godsticks album came as a bit of a surprise. At some point between the release of their second album ‘The Envisage Conundrum’ and the writing of 2015’s ‘Emergence’, things took a heavier turn. It wasn’t necessarily for the better. What had once been a fairly inventive prog band with a few harder moments was now a full on prog metal band. The lion’s share of ‘Emergence’ was rather…dull. Still, some fans seemed to take to the more aggressive sound and it undoubtedly attracted a few new ears. For better or worse, at least this was a prog band actually progressing.
Over the past two years, Marillion have revisited their back-catalogue with the release of several box sets, pairing some much loved albums with live material, demos and much-celebrated 5.1 mixes. Following the release of the ‘Afraid of Sunlight’ box set in 2019, the next installment comes in March 2020 with a lavish reissue of the debut album, ‘Script For A Jester’s Tear’.
A long held fan favourite, the five disc set will include a new stereo mix of the album by Andy Bradfield and Avril Macintosh, a brand new 5.1 mix, a documentary on the making of the album – now heralded as a prog rock classic – and a wealth of early live material.
A full rundown of the contents can be explored below.
During their forty three year career, Rush released nineteen studio albums, a covers EP and eleven official live albums. In addition, a couple of extra archive live shows have been released as part of super-deluxe reissues of a couple of their 70s albums. Whichever way you look at it, they had a truly impressive career – one that would put many other prog bands to shame.
What’s more, Rush made relatively few bad records. With such longevity, of course, some are better than others; some are heavier than others; some seem more complex than others. Almost miraculously, only one or two missed the mark across a five decade stretch.
If you like Rush, though, more often than not, you love the band and don’t need steering through their extensive catalogue. However, for those yet to take the plunge properly (and for those who love a good debate), we present our “Super Seven” – a look at the seven discs we consider to give the Rush novice the very best overview.