Magnum - The Valley Of Tears - The Ballads

Published December 23 2016

*=Staff's pick	Dream About You (Remastered) Back In Your Arms Again (Re-recorded)* The Valley Of Tears (RemixedRemastered) Broken Wheel (Re-recorded) A Face In The Crowd (Remixed/Remastered) Your Dreams Won't Die (Remastered) Lonely Night (Re-recorded) The Last Frontier (Remixed/Remastered)* Putting Things In Place (Remixed/Remastered)* When The World Comes Down (New live version)

Genre	Ballad Rock	Bob Catley	Vocals
Tracks	10	Tony Clarkin	Guitar
Running time	54 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Steamhammer/SPV	Al Barrow	Bass
Release	January 6, 2017	Harry James	Drums
Country	England	Mark Stanway	Keyboard
Producer	Tony Clarkin
Similar artists	---

Keyboard player Mark Stanway has since the recordings parted ways with the band.

Magnum puts out a compilation album containing only ballads. 6 of the songs are taken from the band's 2000's albums and are for this release either remastered or both remixed and remastered and the remaining 4 titles, originally recorded in 1986-1994, now appear as re-recorded songs in different versions.

Although most of the songs are all right or at least decent and that I'm fully aware of that this is a ballad album completely, it still gets boring and uninteresting after a while. It really doesn't matter to me how good the veterans in Magnum usually are, because this effort is just too much of a desert to me. Fine, 1 or 2 spins work, but to go further than that is actually more than enough for someone who is looking for some action and balls in music too.

I realize that some people dig the shit out of Magnum's lightest material, so I guess that this record in some way must be appealing to those type of fans, but to me personally it's coming really close to complete nonsense and I'm just waiting for some kind of heavier activity. With a palpable lack of action and guts there's no way that I can find myself attracted to the overall material and I choose to look ahead to the band's next real studio album instead.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7	2	6	7	4

Summary
3 chalices of 10 - Tobbe