THE ROARING SILENCE

A slow grower, but not to be dismissed as middle of the road 70's pop/rock rubbish. The Roaring Silence is a slick album. The compositions are rich in melody, and the standard consistently high throughout. The production too, is polished and quite ahead of its time (1976) The album opens with a cover of Springsteens 'Blinded by the Light';a full length version. I have this album on vinyl.If you get the CD, you'll get the single version of 'BBTL' as a bonus track. 'Singing the dolphins through' is a deceptive piece of music. My initial reaction to it was, why bother? But like many parts of this album it grows on you over time. Sometimes the best albums are like that, and dont knock you out straight away. 'Waiter there's a yawn in my ear' is the instrumental that closes side one on the vinyl version. Despite the ridiculous title, this is a great piece of music. Manfred Mann plays some cool Moog licks here, but dont expect explosive Rick Wakemen-esqe keyboard flurries. Thats not really Manfreds style, and I was left dissapointed by his work on the 'Solar Fire' album. But he makes up for it here. He seems to like bending the notes in his solos; a trademark that I find a little irritating at times, but he does it less on TRS. 'The Road to Babylon' opens side 2, with a prelude of 'fake' Gregorian chant which sets the atmosphere perfectly. This is perhaps my favourite track on the album. A tense, and slick track which allows vocalist Chris Thompson to show his full strengths. This was the guy who sung on Jeff Waynes War of the Worlds album. He sung the song 'Thunderchild' and his voice is unmistakable. I'm no expert on MMEB, but the Roaring Silence is a good place to start IMO. A consistent album of strong melodies, imaginitive compositions, and quirky lyrics. The sound may be a little too commercial for the hardened progger; it's the sort of sound that would set my teeth on edge sometimes, but MMEB seem to cunningly avoid the cliches that could have pushed this album into that category.