After Script For a Jester's Tear, Marillion had to do one thing: deliver. And deliver strongly, unless the band wanted to see itself disappear among the eternal ranks of promising one-hit wonders that it most likely didn't want to be a part of. Fortunately, Fugazi was no letdown. The band's sophomore album saw a greater experience that allowed Marillion to streamline its ambitious rawness into a more refined attack, although a certain sacrifice of ripping emotion had to be made in order for the catchy pop of "Punch & Judy" to take place (suffer not, prog radicals; it's pop with a riveting 7/8 segment) and an equally accessible mood of arena rock to take over the initial tribal drums of "Assassing."

The record has Marillion written all over it, however, so that the driving thunder of magnificent epics and the literate extroversion of Fish mix into an already tried formula to send feverish chills through anyone's flesh in the slow musical dementia of "She Chameleon." The aforementioned track slithers across the listener's ears with the deftly sinister agility of a viper, describing the depressing dejection of one-night stands before seeing the band moving into "Incubus," a song that flows through a greater variance of emotion and features Fish in one of his preferred roles of all time: the grinning jester.

And it is certainly a role that befitted Marillion at the time, as the band succeeded in recording a fantastic album despite the incessant pressures from its record label, managing in the process to throw highly delectable guitarwork from Rothery and basslines from Trewavas into a relatively short "Emerald Lies" and creating a smothering atmosphere from its triggered drums and massive paranoia. But it was with the album's title track that Marillion finally cemented its status as one of eighties progressive rock's most important bands, going into a neurotically adventurous narration of the world's most erratic truths that plunges into saddened drama, oddball pop sense of humor, and belligerent nuclear intimidation without missing a step, before tying the affair up with a gorgeous finale in a surprisingly natural manner. One of the things that were right in this totally fugazi world.

-by Marcelo Silveyra

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