Marillion are my band of the year. Having started the year with just Marbles, over the course of 2015 I have purchased five of their albums: Brave, Sounds That Can't Be Made, Anoraknophobia, Holidays in Eden and Seasons End. I've completely fallen in love with Dry Land (off HiE). Just an incredibly beautiful, spacious song. Brave is a very moving album too, especially The Great Escape.
And they get my 2,500th forum post.
Interesting. HUGE Marillion fan (both incarnations) and though I missed them opening for Rush on the infamous MC tour (they played 20 minutes from me while I was in college and I opted to skip it) I've seen Marillion with Hogarth twice and Fish three times.
Curious what you think of the six albums you have: they have, what, 15 albums now, and if you asked me to name FIVE you have to have, you only have two on that list (Marbles and Brave). HiE was decidedly lackluster after Seasons End, which is a stellar album (King of Sunset Town live was mesmerizing, and sold me hook line and sinker on Hogarth). For me, "After Me" is everything you describe Dry Land as, and for me, Dry Land is just a rewrite of After Me. Anoraknophobia was good not great, but at the time it smelled faintly of desperation, what with the single coming "two for one" with a letter to be sent to radio stations, and statements to critics about how it's "not prog", and name-dropping Massive Attack every 46 seconds. At the time I was on a Marillion hiatus (they completely and utterly lost me with This Strange Engine, to this day a competitor for least favorite Marillion album along with Somewhere Else). After taking a flier on Marbles (which I love love love) I went back and got Radiation (LOVE IT, both versions), marillion.com (LOVE IT), and Anoraknophobia (like it) and subsequently fell in love with Afraid of Sunlight (LOVE IT).
Two thoughts for those digging in: once you make it through the albums proper, you MUST seek out the EMI b-sides compilations. They are cheap ($10, $15 in the US) and three (Fish era)/four (Hogarth) era sets with all the b-sides. The b-sides from Season's End are all album quality (and often get played live) and some of the Brave material (edits, mostly) is really interesting.
2. You might find that the Hogarth material that Dave Meegan is involved with is I'll say different (though I mean "better", because I like it a lot more) than the rest of the material with Hogarth. Just an observation.