Magnum: Escape From The Shadow Garden – Live 2014

Catlin & Clarkin’s evergreen pomp rockers mix new songs with old faves.

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Unlike many a veteran band, Magnum’s recent output has had every right to compare with their classic work. So few fans will have been complaining when they started this live set in Sweden with six tracks from their past three albums.

As soon as that characteristic galloping chug kicks into gear we’re on comfortingly familiar territory, sweeping into action in some fantasy novel’s battlefield on Live Til You Die.

Delayed gratification is there in spades for long-time fans, though an expansive 10-minute reading of How Far Jerusalem and several other old classics (Vigilante, Kingdom of Madness) further heighten the singalong factor, and duly serve to remind us that this is a band who have every right to cherish their past as well as being proud of their present./o:p

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Johnny Sharp
Johnny Sharp

Johnny is a regular contributor to Prog and Classic Rock magazines, both online and in print. Johnny is a highly experienced and versatile music writer whose tastes range from prog and hard rock to R’n’B, funk, folk and blues. He has written about music professionally for 30 years, surviving the Britpop wars at the NME in the 90s (under the hard-to-shake teenage nickname Johnny Cigarettes) before branching out to newspapers such as The Guardian and The Independent and magazines such as Uncut, Record Collector and, of course, Prog and Classic Rock.