Murder Machines

Introduction: Murder Machines was released as a streaming-only track on 4th February 2022. h said, "I tried not to write about the virus. But it's been so much a part of life for the past two years that it kept creeping in. The terrifying reality that to wrap my arms around a father or mother could ultimately kill them, gave birth to this song. The lyric was then developed to hint at jealousy and heartbreak - the pain of watching the woman you love embrace another man, or the emotional "murder" of the serial adulterer. And, of course, the arms of the superpowers, and the psychopaths who sometimes have their fingers on the triggers. Beware the murder machines..."

In an interview for Smashing Interviews Magazine entitled Marillion's Masterpiece of Waning Moments, h said, "We’ve just lived (and many in the world are still living) through a time when to embrace another human being could carry the risk of killing that person. Not being able to hug the people you love is such an unnatural notion for us to cope with – like being in prison. The thought was how Murder Machines started.

"My lyrics usually work on more than one level, sometimes several. You can kill someone by loving them, especially if that love is unrequited or "the love that dare not speak its name," and I'm not just talking about what Oscar Wilde was referring to – but all 'forbidden' loves. So the murder machine is the virus, but it can be people, too." Thanks to Paul Rose for sourcing that!

'Fragments of life'
Viruses such as the Corona virus are not usually considered to be alive, since they do not exhibit the seven life processes generally considered necessary to meet the definition; movement, respiration, sensitivity, nutrition, excretion, reproduction and growth. They do have DNA or RNA, but can't move, grow, convert nutrients into energy or excrete waste products. They can reproduce, but only by hijacking a living cell and using its organelles. Some scientists believe that viruses were the initial building blocks from which cells eventually evolved.

Cover Notes: An initial teaser showed an image of what appears to be grey paper cut such that a red, textured background is visible beneath, looking a  bit like a blood spatter. A blue splodge overlays the grey, as though a drop of paint had been dropped from a height. The image was by Simon Ward and is entirely CGI.

The band's name and the song title is at the top of the image with the release date immediately below. The quote "I put my arms around her" appears at the bottom of the graphic.

A subsequent image, which looks more like a traditional record sleeve cover, was released on the 1st of February, as per the image at the top of this page. The concept of a textured red image underlying cut grey paper remains, though the entire image is much darker - it almost looks as though it's an underlit photograph - and the red image beneath has indigo and grey paint spatters on it. The 'cut out' is a crude circle with a halo of lines bisecting the circumference. In combination with the title, it strongly calls to mind the coronavirus molecule. 


Songs with a link have explanations.

• Introduction
• Be Hard On Yourself
• Reprogram The Gene
• Murder Machines
• The Crow and the Nightingale
• Sierra Leone
• Care

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