"An hour before it's dark": Marillion's new release

If you set aside 2019’s With Friends From The Orchestra, a reimagining of favourite tracks with strings, it’s been more than five years since Marillion’s last studio album, the Top 5-reaching Fuck Everyone And Run (F.E.A.R). That album confirmed Marillion’s relevance six decades into their career, with its tracks capturing the tumult of Brexit and its prescient tracks about Leavers and Remainers.

Given that the group’s current line-up are now safely into their fourth decade - incredibly, the last change came when singer Steve Hogarth replaced Fish in 1989 - one could be forgiven for thinking that things were slowing down for the veteran rockers. But, no, here they return as grandiose and eloquent as ever, latterday champions of prog.

An Hour Before It’s Dark isn’t a concept album but there’s darkness and a running theme of doom and gloom that unites it, some of it due to the lockdown world from which it emerged, in part due to the impending destruction of the planet. Everything is on an epic scale, starting with Be Hard On Yourself, a choral, near-orchestral intro leading into a seeming appeal for human restraint, right through to the finale, Care, the title track in all but name, a soothing 15-minute opus that likens the world to a patient in care, living from day to day “an hour before it’s dark”. In between we get Reprogram The Gene, a love song for our world, and the planet-stripping sorrow of Murder Machines, Hogarth’s bleak lyrics and angst-ridden vocals echoing the rest of the album, equally.

The record has darkness at its heart, but that doesn’t mean it’s gloomy; guitarist Steve Rothery provides echoing, often sweet licks that counterbalance the black vision while the keyboards of Mark Kelly swirl and shimmer. There’s a pomp and vision - not to mention decent tunes - that turn it into a statement for our times.

Marillion have always gone their own way. This pre-apocalyptic affair sees them dealing with difficult times in their own curiously poetic fashion.