BOB CATLEY

(Frontiers, 1999)

It is always difficult to make radical decisions and consequently to assume the changes that these they bring harnessed. Bob Catley, the former-vocalist of Magnum, made it and after more than 20 years next to her partner, the guitarist and composer Tony Clarkin, she decided to give had concluded the labor relationship that now found them joining efforts in Hard Rain (a project musically without transcendency post-Magnum) and to face of full her career soloist. We should be thanked by the valiant decision taken by Catley, since after the excellent "The Tower", their disk solitary premiere, today "Legends" presents us, and not many waited an album of this caliber. Again that leader of Ten, Gary Hughes who take charge of the production and composition of the topics, and the question repeats: how is there this musician to arm and to take place in way almost inexhaustible material of real hierarchy as for hard melodic rock refers?. is The certain thing that "Legends" is a conceptual album based on characters, fictitious or real, that with the step of the time and for its legacy, have they become mythological figures. A very good idea developed with a quality, emotivity and effectiveness, so much lyrical as musical, not very common in the world of the always in having insulted hard rock. With some members of Ten in the study band, as guitarist Vinny Burns and the bassist Steve McKenna, the drummer Dante Fox Jon Cooksey and the own Hughes contributing the more keyboards some choirs, Bob Catley and their unmistakable voices are able to give to each topic that special characteristic that transforms a simple song into something memorable. The characters masterfully evoked in each composition of that work they go of it is from Elvis Presley ("The Pain") to the ghost of the other one ("Too Late"), going by Marilyn Monroe ("Tender is the Night") until the disturbing Medusa of the greek mythology or Bram Stocker's dark Drácula ("Shelter from the Night"). In consonance, "Legends" appears surrounded of that epic and almost mystic aura that the vocalist also manages. Does Bob Catley, for its character of institutional figure, have the unconditional support of the English and European fanatic in general, and now that Gary Hughes replaces Clarkin, will this association to be prolonged with the same quality that demonstrated until the moment? is it worthwhile to be pending?

Javier Izurieta

Epopeya