Saturday 19 March 2016

Grendel (Marillion, 1982)

I wondered about including "Grendel" in my blog for years, and I finally came to a positive decision. This is kind of an orphan song, as Marillion themselves never perform it live nowadays and they even seem ashamed of it. Nonetheless, this is a seminal song in their career, one of their earliest compositions and one the bravest ones. Bravest, yes, because it wasn't easy at all to write amnd perform a prog rock suite in 1982, let alone the mythological lyrics . By the way, those lyrics weren't directly inspired by the Beowulf, as Fish put down in poetry a novel by John Gardner, so that the song deals more with intolerance than with monsters. 

Grendel was released as part of "Market Square Heroes" single.

That said, I actually love this epic, so powerfully emotional and so rich in changes and - of course - in musical quotations. I think this is the perfect manifesto of the resurgence of prog in the '80s and also a brilliant example of how moving prog rock can be when Fish and Marillion come into play. I apologise with the band and the intellectual reviewers, but I'm still in love with Grendel (I mean the song, not the monster...).

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