Marseille: Unfinished Business

And still it’s unfinished.

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It’s more than 30 years since Marseille threatened to become a major band, by doing it The French Way. They were lively

Now they’re back, but, on the evidence of their new record they’ve started to stagnate. The new Marseille don’t seem to have the musical drive or creativity to take off from where they left off.

Unfinished Business is decent enough, as a basic-style NWOBHM record, but these days that’s not enough. The band get off to a reasonable start on the title track and I Believe, but never kick on, and too often settle for the obvious, as on Everyone Dies Young, when something a little different is called for.

Ultimately, Unfinished Business is a disappointing album.

Malcolm Dome

Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for Record Mirror magazine in the late 70s and Metal Fury in the early 80s before joining Kerrang! at its launch in 1981. His first book, Encyclopedia Metallica, published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. Dome is also credited with inventing the term "thrash metal" while writing about the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad in 1984. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1998 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and was a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009. He died in 2021