Attack of the Grey Lantern is the debut album by English alternative rock band Mansun released on 17 February 1997 via Parlophone. The album spent a total of 19 weeks on the UK Albums Chart.
When Attack of the Grey Lantern was released in February 1997, it charted at No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart. The album was preceded by four singles, the first of which "Egg Shaped Fred" was released a year prior. "Egg Shaped Fred" was Mansun's début single for Parlophone Records and made No. 37 in the UK. The following three singles ("Stripper Vicar", "Wide Open Space", "She Makes My Nose Bleed") all made the top forty each improving of the previous singles' chart position. The final single released from the album was "Taxloss" which followed the album in April 1997 and made No. 15.
In the US, Mansun enjoyed their only chart success with "Wide Open Space" reaching the modest position of No. 25 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart.
NME reviewer Mark Beaumont, while noting that by the album's end "we still haven't the foggiest idea of what Paul Draper is on about", praised Attack of the Grey Lantern as "music for an unrealistically massive film script that verges on the awesome with almost every fondled fret."
Pretty sure this is the second offering from the band but I can't remember how similar the first was or how it struck me. This was very good, proggish rock somewhere more along the Queen-ish end of the Brit spectrum. The lead vocals have a little more sneer and whine to them than I strictly care for but that's a quibble.
Attack of the Grey Lantern is an indie rock album with rave reviews. For some reason I don't really get it. Nothing stands out and I've heard it all before. An ok album I guess, nothing more.
Attack of the Grey Lantern was better than the other Mansun album and the first half a dozen tracks were pretty good, overall still fairly underwhelming but good enough for a higher 2/5 than the other.
I liked the other Mansun album on the list “Six”, and this one is good too. If limited to 1001 albums probably wouldn’t consider both, but we aren’t limiting ourselves to 1001 albums for the user suggestions.
At first wasn’t quite as appealing as “Six” but it grew on me. At times was getting Tears for Fears and Oasis vibes in a good way.
Really good, slightly proggy Britpop. Very Suede-ish, and I'm a big Suede fan. I really like those overblown theatrics, like the opener being just straight up a Bond song.
Way better than the other Mansun album on here. 4/5.
M A N S U N
I had no idea who they were until some hoser put their album Six on this very website, but I'm excited to hear more of their stuff.
Update: idk, I figured I'd enjoy this more than I did. While it can be fun, and all the elements for a rockin' good time are there, I had to replay parts of the album because they went in one ear and straight out the other. Kind of reminds me of Dog Man Star by Suede, where I listened to it, thought "yes, this is objectively good music that is up my alley", but then only rated it a 3
HL: "Taxloss", "Who Do You Hate?", "Stripper Vicar", "Dark Mavis"
March 5, 2026
The list already has enough mediocre britpop. We don't need more.
My personal rating: 3/5
My rating relative to the list: 3/5
Should this have been included on the original list? No.
Apparently there’s 2 Mansun albums here? I would personally only have gone for one, and it’s not this one. Even though I have a fondness for this band, this really isn’t meaningfully different from all the alternative/brit-pop that already is overcrowding the list.
The only possible explanation for now having TWO Mansun albums on the user list is that the members of Mansun are users of this website.
AI-ass alternative rock
You know what I was just thinking, this list was really lacking in Brit Pop/Alt Rock bands!
I'm not sure on the story of this one, but it's fine. Nothing really stuck out as amazing. It wasn't terrible, but I don't know if this is something that I was lacking in my life. I've started this album about 5 different times and it all kind of blurs together.
I've heard worse music, but I don't see this as as album I just had to listen to.
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