Magnum – Here Comes The Rain
Magnum – Here Comes The Rain
Steamhammer / SPV
Release Date: 12/01/24
Running Time: 51:51
Review by Simon Black
10/10
When I wrote this at the start of the week, this was simply the next in a very long line of studio albums spanning a more than fifty-year career. Now, it’s almost certainly the final one.
My original draft of this waxed lyrical about my sadness that this album was not going to get toured, due to Tony Clarkin’s diagnosis of a rare spinal condition that meant standing on stage with a guitar round his neck for two hours was not going to be possible but ended on a hopeful note that this may not necessarily have meant the end of Magnum’s recording career. Then the news that Tony had sadly passed away on the 7th January, 2024 after a short illness landed, and sadness turned to a deep and heart-wrenching sorrow. I was sad that I would not get to see them live when I first heard “Here Comes The Rain”, but now I am heart-broken. It has taken me the best part of a week to even attempt to write about how I feel about this horrible news, so my apologies, but this is as much a eulogy as it is a review of what turned out to be the musical epitaph of one of the most underrated but consistently brilliant musicians to ever have walked the boards.
Tony wrote every single song that was released under the Magnum name, as well as being the man responsible for those beautiful guitar sounds, he also was the source of every single one of the beautiful words that accompanied, and since 1992’s “Sleepwalking” also the producer of every single one of their albums. Without Tony Clarkin, there simply is no more Magnum, and whilst I am sure front man Bob Catley may continue with either his solo work or as a part of Avantasia, that’s it for the band that really started this whole Hard Rock and Metal journey that has dominated my life.
A very, very long time ago, when I was a spotty teen just starting to discover that there was a wealth of really good music out there that was nowhere to be found near the popular charts, a friend of me loaned me his vinyl copy of Magnum’s opus “On A Storyteller’s Night” and quite frankly I was blown away. Within days I had one of my own, along with some of their other back of the net hits from the 80’s and my voyage to the heavier side of life was well and truly under way. Although my tastes encompassed much heavier things as time went on, a couple of years later when their seminal and more Proggy epic “Wings of Heaven” landed (an album strong enough to actually put them in the pop charts) I was in a nirvana of my own and seeing them live cemented this. No matter where my tastes took me over the decades since, Magnum have retained a special place in my heart and soul ever since. Even when they were on hiatus for the best part of a decade, there was either a side or solo project doing the rounds that would allow my more or less uninterrupted run of seeing some splinter of that wonderful core playing those beautiful songs at least once a year until they finally reformed at the turn of the century.
The band had some challenges of late with line-up stability, but the continuing support of Rick Benton on keyboards, Dennis Ward on bass and Lee Morris on drums is showing a line-up behind stalwarts Clarkin and Catley that had really hit its stride. 2022’2 “The Monster Roars” was their strongest album in decades, so this next release was always going to have a challenge keeping up with that benchmark. But this is Magnum we are talking about – a band that has been doing this for a very, very long time, and driven by Clarkin – a man who really knew how to write a solid and emotionally engaging Hard Rock tune at the drop of a hat and as ever supported by singer Bob Catley, whose voice, like the best bottle of single malt whiskies, gets richer and smokier with age.
The trouble with being as studio prolific as Magnum are means that the recent peaks since reformation such as “Brand New Morning”, “On The 13th Day” and most recently “The Monster Roars” have to be interrupted by some sort of trough, even if a dip for Magnum is still a mountain looking down on a hill for some of their competitors. It’s a slow starter, but by the time you get to ‘After The Silence’ things are dialled up to the consistently high standards that Clarkin et al have recently set themselves, and from then on the album does not let up, in what has been an unbroken run of solid and beautiful albums since 2012’s “On The Thirteenth Day”.
Consistency and quality were Magnum’s watch words, but they still have the ability to surprise me it seems, coming this time in the form of second single ‘The Seventh Darkness’, because let’s face it saxophones and trumpets from their guest artistes are not something that has ever cropped up before with Magnum, but it works brilliantly, and is a hugely catchy number that would no doubt have found itself into their regular live playlist. This is a fitting epitaph to a fantastic career.
I have had the opportunity to meet, interview, talk and drink with the various members of Magnum over the years, and a more down-to-earth and likable group of people you could not hope to meet. Tony was always a true gentleman, his conversations always two way and very open and that deep empathic touch in his writing never to far from the surface in his interactions with people. I was sad that I would not get to see them live when I first heard “Here Comes The Rain”, but now I am heart-broken.
Rest In Peace Tony, we will keep the night light burning.
Magnum ‘The Seventh Darkness’
TRACKLISTING:
01. Run Into The Shadows
02. Here Comes The Rain
03. Some Kind Of Treachery
04. After The Silence
05. Blue Tango
06. The Day He Lied
07. The Seventh Darkness
08. Broken City
09. I Wanna Live
10. Borderline
LINE-UP:
Tony Clarkin – Guitar
Bob Catley – Vocals
Rick Benton – Keyboards
Dennis Ward – Bass
Lee Morris – Drums
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Simon Black and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of said party. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
