PRINCESS ALICE AND THE BROKEN ARROW

When We Were Younger

In recent times it has become popular for classic bands to record follow-ups to their most well- regarded albums from their early days. Eloy's Ocean 2, Queensryche's Operation Mindcrime 2, Ian Anderson's Thick As A Brick 2, and Rick Wakeman's Return To The Centre Of The Earth, are just a few examples. Magnum's Princess Alice And The Broken Arrow is the follow-up to their classic On A Storyteller's Night album from 1985. The original album has never been my favourite Magnum album, and it is even disputable whether it really is the classic Magnum album, even if it certainly are among their most popular and significant ones. Other candidates are Chase The Dragon and Wings Of Heaven.

The style is indeed more similar here to that of On A Storyteller's Night than to anything they have done in the years between. Or before, for that matter. This is good news for those who liked the 1985 album, but it is not necessarily good news for Prog fans. Arguably, the most progressive Magnum albums were the pre-On A Storyteller's Night ones. And even some songs from their later albums were far more proggy than anything from On A Storyteller's Night (the excellent Don't Wake The Lion from Wings Of Heaven being the prime example).

I guess that some Magnum fans will regard the present album as a return to form, but for me it is not better than their previous two studio efforts Brand New Morning and Breath Of Life. But of course it is better than their weak 90's albums! The quality of the songs on Princess Alice And The Broken Arrow is not low at all and there are indeed some nice moments here, the nostalgic opener When We Were Younger being one. Still, I cannot give this album the same rating as the 1985 album, or some other of the band's better albums from the 80's and 70's.

Primarily for Magnum fans this one, not for the average Prog fan

This was the third Magnum album after their reunion, and it's another high-quality slab of material from the band - certainly suggesting they still had some fresh ideas to offer. It's not a revolutionary release - still largely in that strange middle ground between neo-prog, the poppier flavours of NWOBHM and melodic rock rock that their classic albums occupy, this time around with substantially less in the way of NWOBHM and more of those other two ingredients. It's a bit more introspective than, say On a Storyteller's Night, as the wistful album opener When We Were Younger strongly emphasises, but it's a delightful development of Magnum's music into a mature style.