VIGILANTE

Vigilante was the first Magnum album I bought (still on vinyl back in 1991 as I didn't have a CD player then) and I still believe it is their best one. True, the songs are more mainstream melodic rock than prog, but I don't care what genre a song is if it sounds great. And that is exactly true for 5 of the 9 songs on this album, with the others somewhere between ok and really good.

I won't copy the structure of the other reviews I published here the last few days and write a sentence or paragrah about each single song, but try a different approach. The production is strong and clear, the songwriting is some of the best we've ever got from Tony Clarkin and Bob Catley's voice has matured compared to the earlier publications. So has the guitar play of Clarkin while Wally Lowe, Mark Stanway and Mickey Barker contribute solidly as ever.

On to the highlights: The lyrics of Need A Lot Of Love, Daniel Bourquoin's saxophone on Midnight (You Won't Be Sleeping), the atmosphere of the strong ballad When The World Comes Down, Tony Clarkin's guitar work on the title track is only rivalled by the solo in Storyteller's Night and finally the bass line of Back Street Kid, which has been my favourite Magnum song from the beginning and still is, maybe because I always dreamt of having a band, recording and performing my own songs with my own lyrics which of course never became reality.

2 songs rate 3 stars, 2 songs 4 stars and 5 songs 5 stars, so the average is something like 4.33, meaning 4 stars.

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