Anoraknophobia

Marbles	marillion.com	Somewhere Else With 'Somewhere Else' Marillion have played to their strengths and cut one of their very best records. With their innate sense of drama and pomp tempered by a winning melancholy, Marillion have produced a set of rich and vivid soundscapes. 'Somewhere El	Brave 2CD set. EMI.	Afraid of Sunlight Digitally remastered reissue of the hit English prog rock outfit's 1995 album for EMI with a bonus CD featuring nine rare tracks & CD-ROM material. The main album contains eight tracks, including the title cut, plus 'Beautiful', 'CannibalSurf Babe' and 'King'. The bonus disc trac...
Holidays in Eden Another Reissue of Marillion's Original Album with Bonus Disc Containing Over 40 Minutes of Unreleased Material. 28 Pages Bookled features Previouisly Unseen Photographs from the Band's Guitarist Steve Rothery and Sleevenotes from Fish.	Season's End 24 Bit Remastered from the Original 1/2" Mastertapes. a Bonus Nine Track Disc is Included, featuring Previously Unreleased Versions of 'Season's End', 'The Uninvited Guest', 'Berlin' and Others.	Radiation Specially-priced reissue of this prog-rock band's 1998 album, often cited as one of the best of their recent offerings. 9 tracks including 'Under The Sun', 'These Chains' and more. Sanctuary.	This Strange Engine	Fear of a Blank Planet On Fear of a Blank Planet veteran progressive-rock act Porcupine Tree takes up the task of exploring the alienating forces of the media and its impact on our youths and ourselves. Fear's titular cut features lyrics rife with allusions to the confusing, isolating effects of TV, th...

Marillion ...really ?
Another deception for me, there is some good pop rock songs, like "Between you and me", "Quartz", "Map of the World" and some good songs more like Marillion fans are used to like "When I meet God" and "This is the 21st Century" but it is a bad album for a band like Marillion. They can do much better than this.

Artistic and moving
Although I have all their studio CDs, I really like Marillion's first 2 albums much more than the rest - they had a strong neo-progressive sound with those, full of melodic keyboards and gripping, savage vocals. However, they abandoned that sound after those 2 discs. For the rest of their career, they mixed modern alterno-pop with a newer style of progressive/art rock: a more subtle, mellow, style - full of understated musicianship and reserved vocals that would swell into passionate crescendos at times. "Anoraknophobia", despite it's silly title and cover, has the best example of the latter. Although there's usually several songs on their later albums that I think are masterpieces, this album has the highest ratio. Only the trite, cliche pop song "Map of the World" is a letdown (and keeps this CD from getting 5 stars), otherwise "Separated Out" and "Between You and Me" are catchy rock songs and the rest of the album is sublime, artistic, and poetic pieces of art. The overall sound fits in with when it was released around 2001 or so(they sound more like Radiohead and other contemporaries of this time than the early-Genesis-meets-80's-pop sound of early Marillion, but they have for years), but the artistic value of this matches that of their early works.

Bad Gazpacho
I can't believe I'm finally letting go. No more Marillion music for me. The transformation is complete. I just can't get into the band under H. I'm not saying they're bad or anything like that, but I simply don't enjoy the music. And I've been a loyal fanatic since Script so I go way back. I saw them live twice in the States during the Fish-era. What I loved about them then can best be summarized by energy and emotion. On some songs, like "Map..." and "21st Century" the emotion is there and maybe even a wee bit of energy, but on every other song we're looking at adult-contemporary elevator music. Hey, if this is the direction they want to go, so be it. I've bought every one of their releases but this is my last. I was one of those who pre-ordered. What a waste. My expectations for this band have slowly eroded with each release. I finally get it. This is an album they made for themselves. Frankly, as a Fish-era fan, this isn't for me. I hope you enjoy it, it was a complete waste of money for me.

Not what I was expecting....but who cares?
Rather late at jumping on the Marillion bandwagon, I'd been filling out my collection of their CD's in mish-mash order: first I bought "Clutching at Straws", "Season's End" and "Brave" in one fell swoop. They seemed ok, and "Brave" caught my attention the most. Then I bought "This Strange Engine" and was even more enmaored. Here was a band that changed with each release. Each successive CD I purchased surprised me and delighted me on different levels and for different reasons. "Holidays in Eden", "Marbles" (their best yet, in my humble opinion) and (...) (vastly underrated in my estimation) came next, and I became rabid to buy the rest. I've since bought the Marbles on the Road DVD, and am totally mezmerized by the music on it. Have watched it several times in just over a week. Now I have "Anoraknophobia", and it too shattered my expectations. I have to say I was hoping for more like (...), but I've since learned that that kind of hoping and wishing is foolish and doomed to disappointment. This CD starts powerfully then meanders some. I'm very impressed with "Between You and Me", kind of turned off by "Separated Out" (for some reason", but totally blown away by "This is the 21st Century". This song is so compelling and subtle in ways that seem rather Pink Floyd-ish, but still are clearly Marillion's creativity fully stretched. Although I like other CD's by them more than this one, I still feel it's solid and would recommend it quickly.

Good but not that good!!!
This is simply a Marillion cd that they seem to like a lot as musicians and creative force. They went for the grooves on some of the songs. This work is far away from the rest of the band body of work. For me the stand out songs are: "MAP OF THE WORLD" a song that shoud have been a smash single if radio were not in the mess. Also, the first song and "This is the 20 century"...the rest are songs they seem to create while improvising. These do not mean they are bad songs, no, simply they are "diferent" to what the band does. Marillion is a band that you can buy any cd and you will be pleased. They are one of the world s' best bands.