Amazon.co.uk Review
A would-be blockbuster update of the classic TV adventure series,
The Avengers was the notorious box-office disaster of the summer of 1998. It looked promising, and had the film been released complete rather than cut by 40 minutes after a preview screening to a hostile audience in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, the result might have been very different. Meanwhile
The Avengers: The Album takes inspiration from Tom Cruise's big-screen adaptation of another 1960s spy show,
Mission: Impossible, opening with a rhythm-heavy reworking of Laurie Johnson's classic theme from the original series. Then the "Storm" breaks with Grace Jones and The Radio Science Orchestra delivering surely the greatest James Bond song never written, and a number to rival Shirley Bassey's "Goldfinger". Elsewhere Suggs's "I Am" displays his old Madness, Annie Lennox follows her "Love Song for a Vampire" from
Bram Stoker's Dracula with "Mama", while Stereo MCs and Utah Saints bring a very 90s edge to proceedings. The album closes with the impassioned "Summer's End" by Ashtar Command featuring Sinead O'Connor. Fans of the original TV series will want to know that there is an album by Laurie Johnson simply called
The Avengers, while Joel McNeely's inventive orchestral score is also available.
--Gary S. Dalkin