Märvel
Double Decade

The masked trio of Märvel has been around for a while now, two decades is what they are celebrating with this majestic release called Double Decade. I first heard them back in 2011 with the album Warhawks of War, I still have that good looking promo in a box somewhere here. It was the cover and the text line “It has never been easy, those who say so are liars” from the track The Effort that was most memorable on that album – The Effort is on this album that is a compilation of the best, the hidden, and two new tracks. Something to lure the album collectors, new music not released before, but most of it is not new. The cover isn’t fantastic either. So, what about the album then?

Most of the songs are familiar, all of them are of the retro styled rock that is the playing style of Märvel – no surprise there of course. There are some tracks, probably those b-sides and things like that, with quite poor sound, and the new tracks I don’t really notice as new when casually listening through the album – Märvel’s fans will of course see that thing differently. There isn’t that much variation despite being material over twenty years, guess one conclusion to that can be that all their albums sound about the same. But it could also be down to the selection of songs, they may just have picked similar songs all the way through. With so much similarity the albums feels a tad on the longer side, it could certainly have been shorter, remove the songs with weaker sound, save the new one for the next album, and perhaps we could have a decent collection of the best of Märvel.

I like these guys, they may not innovate or anything, but they do make entertaining songs and it is nice to listen to them whenever you need accessible music to have a bit of white noise. Very inoffensive stuff. Quite enjoyable, but also a little bit boring – like most released music tend to be. But I notice that Märvel have released many great tracks, but also none that are outstanding, on the other hand is it not much in terms of poor tracks either. It is a fine compilation of tracks, nothing outstandingly fantastic or bad. I guess it summarises the career of these masked musicians quite well.

For the Märvel Fan it should be a nice addition, you get some unheard stuff, some new tracks, and a selection of the finest tracks of the band. I don’t think it is an album that will do much for more casual music fans though, it lacks the fresh ideas, and none of the tracks is outstanding – a good compilation that lacks the magic touch, could be a good way to summarise it.

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