lukretion Middle Earth is the third solo album by Bob Catley, the iconic lead singer of British classic hard rock legends Magnum. When Magnum temporarily disbanded in 1995, Catley started a solo career pairing up with Gary Hughes, the singer of another prominent British melodic hard rock band, Ten. The partnership between Hughes and Catley led to the release of Catley’s debut solo album, The Tower, in 1998, followed by Legends in 1999, and then Middle Earth in 2001. The lineup of Middle Earth is the same as that responsible for the recording of Legends. Joining Catley and Hughes is a sort of AOR/classic rock dream-team comprised of Ten’s guitarist and bassist Vinny Burns and Steve McKenna, and Dante’s Fox drummer Jon Cooksey. Meanwhile Hughes plays keyboards, provides backing vocals, and writes and produces all the nine songs of the album. Unsurprisingly given the musicians involved, the album inhabits musical territories halfway between Magnum and Ten. It’s a lush and classy brand of melodic hard rock, never aggressive or metallic yet with sufficient bombast and epicness to result appealing also to a fair share of metalheads.

The main attraction of the album is of course Catley’s voice that, like good wine, keeps getting better and better with age. At the time he recorded Middle Earth the singer was in his mid-fifties. Yet his flawless vocal delivery does not show any signs of decline. The elegance with which Catley manages to deliver his vocal lines is peerless and his velvet tone is ever-so endearing. Unfortunately, however, Catley is not given many great vocal melodies to sing on this album. While his previous two records (and particularly Legends) were brimming with fantastic vocal lines, sophisticated and catchy, making each song an irresistible earworm that refused to leave the listener’s head, most songs on Middle Earth feature fairly unremarkable vocal hooks. This is one of the main issues I have with this album, which I consider the least spectacular in the trio of albums released by the Catley-Hughes partnership.

The other issue I have with the album is that the lack of strong vocal melodies is complemented by a songwriting that relies heavily on hazy keyboard arrangements at the expense of guitars. Vinny Burns’s considerable talent is pretty much wasted on this album. He shines in a few solos on a handful of songs, but rhythmically he is noticeable by his absence here. You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of interesting guitar riffs of the album. The opening track “The Wraith of the Rings” contains perhaps the only truly impressive guitar work of the whole record. Moreover, most of the times the guitars are buried so far down in the mix that you really have to make an effort to figure out what they are playing. The drums suffer from a similar treatment. The result is that many of the songs lack in substance, as they are saturated by swathes of shapeless keyboards without a strong rhythmical presence.

To make things worse there is a certain homogeneity in Hughes’ songwriting on this album that tends to blur the boundaries between its different tracks. I suspect this is partly intended given that Middle Earth is a concept album inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. However, I miss the variation and the dynamics that made the previous album Legends such an enthralling and exciting ride. In contrast, the musical journey here is a fairly sedated one and I really have to make an effort to remain focused, especially as the album enters its second-half.

It is not all gloom and doom, though. As I mentioned earlier, Catley’s classy vocal delivery remains a highlight. It is difficult to write completely unlistenable songs when you have such a superb interpreter as Catley behind the mic. Moreover, the album does feature a couple of strong tracks, especially in the first half, like opener “The Wraith of the Rings”, the three-parted epic “The Fields That I Recall” and the subdued mid-tempo “City Walls”. All considered, however, this was a pretty disappointing album for me, especially since it followed such a strong release like Legends.

[Also published on metal-archives.com]