VIGILANTE

Compared to the On A Storyteller's Night album, Vigilante has a better crystal clear sound, but the compositions are simpler and not better; Vigilante is also quite less heavy, more pop and accessible. There is one ANNOYING thing about the recording: the high frequencies of the lead vocals (especially the "S" pronunciation) are pretty distorted due to a too strong level of recording. The rhythmic electric guitar is less aggressive and razor, so that the keyboards can be more appreciated. The lead & backing vocals are very good. Nothing can be more conventional regarding the drums and bass. The keyboards are more ear candy: just enjoy the tender keyboards on "When The World Comes Down": this track has some pretty sentimental bits. The compositions are not elaborated enough to classify the album in any progressive rock subgenre: Vigilante is rather an FM hard rock album a la Night Ranger with lush background modern keyboards.

After seeing Magnum at Milton Keynes prior to the release of "Vigilante" I was surprised how their live sound didn't get accurately transfered to the album. If you like this album try and get hold of the recording of these songs at Milton Keynes. Really good! I don't really blame the musicianship mainly the production. The result I have found is rather weak. Oh yeah, the cover was absolutely aweful. Much of the songs were great for the time but we are talking about the back end of the eightees when hairspray bands were still very popular. Now bands like Magnum are generally forgotten and passed over for classic rock bands.

I have great fondness for this era but mainly for the memories including the tshirts and gigs I attended. The music now however is a little embarrasing.

Magnum at their peak of their career. While this album Vigilante from 1986 is less good than previous one, who was a real treasure in hard rock with prog leanings, tyhis one is more towards AOr with here and there some hard rock elemnts. That prog leanings are almost gone, leave place to a much more comercial sound, in fact typical for mid '80's hard/AOR music. Well, now here are some good pieces, but only for those who ventures in this kind of music, for classical trained prog listner this one might be a desaster. The piece are : the slow one Need A Lot Of Love, sometimes i have the imppresion i listen to some Whitesnake ballads, the similarity of Catley's voice with Coverdaleis obvious, but not bad really, the title track Vigilante is an hard number with Clarki's guitar make the main roll here and the last one Back Street Kid, the rest are between mediocre and so so. This 3 piece maybe save the album to me to became a boring and less enjoyble than anything Magnum rease in the '80's, even worst than the next one Wings of heaven. Many Magnum fans considered Vigilante among their best, but not for me, 100 times less good then On a story tellers night. I will give 2,5 rounded to 3 but, this is less good than any Magnum album where i give also 3 stars.

Hold on, there's a new way a comin'

1986's Vigilante was in fundamental respect different from previous Magnum albums. The approach adopted here was a lot more commercial and the end result is a more streamlined Magnum sound. While I have always liked the title track, I initially dismissed the rest of the album as too poppy and simplistic. Hearing the album again now years later, I have a different, a more positive, impression. I initially gave only one star to this album, but I have now upgraded my rating to a more fair two stars. Some of the songs still leave me cold, but I have developed a new appreciation for several songs. The weakest tracks are the first three and the last, but the ones in the middle are all good ones; Midnight (You Won't Be Sleeping), Red On The Highway, Holy Rider, and When The World Comes Down are actually not bad at all! They are not progressive, but neither are they simple Pop Rock songs.

The album was produced by Roger Taylor of Queen and the sound of the album is very much of its time. The feel of the album is entirely different from On A Storyteller's Night; lighter, streamlined, as I said, but not without substance. Queen is one of my all-time favourite bands, and I'm sure that fans of 80's Queen will like this music. It must surely have been very interesting for the Magnum guys to work with someone that without doubt was one of their heroes.

The next Magnum album, Wings Of Heaven, would surprisingly be the band's best and a momentary return to the form of the bands earlier days. But Vigilante is a decent album in its own right, after all, and not their worst.

Recommended for fans

If this album was all you knew of Magnum, you would have to wonder why they are included on this site. Well, this album is all I know of Magnum. Roger Taylor of Queen co-produced the album, so I guess it's prog-related-related. But musically, there is nothing here of interest. It's an album of plain, unmemorable arena rock. Sure, the backup vocals have a hint of that Queen layered sound, but that's as far as it goes. Besides, by this point, Queen had gotten so bland that they had become irrelevant.

In 1986, a Polygram rep, knowing I was a prog fan, gave me this album. I listened to it once or twice before relegating it into my LP collection. It doesn't sound any better on revisiting it.

I've read quite a few reviews who depend their rating whether the album (or artist) is prog and rate it down if not. I will not do so.

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.