The third album by this incarnation of Renaissance was a match for their previous success, Ashes Are Burning, with equally impressive performances and songwriting and a few new musical twists added. The songs here fit more easily into a rock vein, and the prior album's folk influences are gone. Turn of the Cards rocks a bit harder, albeit always in a progressive rock manner, and Jon Camp's bass and Terence Sullivan's drums are both harder and heavier here, the bass (the group's only amplified instrument) in particular much more forward in the mix. This change works in giving the band a harder sound that leaves room for Jimmy Horowitz's orchestral accompaniments, which are somewhat more prominent than those of Richard Hewson on the prior album, with the horns and strings, in particular, more exposed. Annie Haslam is in excellent voice throughout, and finds ideal accompaniment in Michael Dunford's acoustic guitar and John Tout's piano. The writing team of Dunford and Betty Thatcher also adds some new wrinkles to the group's range -- in addition to progressive rock ballads like "I Think of You," they delivered "Black Flame," a great dramatic canvas for Haslam and Tout, in particular; and "Mother Russia" is a surprising (and effective) move into topical songwriting, dealing with the plight of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and other victims of Soviet repression (you had to be there in the 1970s to realize what a burning issue this was). And then there were the soaring, pounding group virtuoso numbers like "Things I Don't Understand," which managed to hold audience interest across nine or ten minutes of running time. From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/turn-of-the-cards-mw0000056582#review
This is an explanation of the song "Black Flame" directly from the lyricist herself. This is an excerpt from an interview With Betty Thatcher and Annie Haslam from a broadcast on WYSP Radio on 27 June 1993. The response was transcribed verbatim and I've edited it a bit, but only to remove unnecessary text not pertaining to the answer. The transcription of the entire interview is at http://www.jtl.us/nlightsweb/lib/reviews/that.htm but this is the relevant part pertaining to this song.
Interviewer: "How about the 'Black Flame'?"
Betty Thatcher: "OK, I know exactly why I wrote that. It was about the Vietnam War. I was talking to somebody at a party and they said that they thought, ‘The killing was so bad. It was terrible.' And I said, 'Yes, of course.' And they said, 'So we should take the Americans and line them up against the wall and shoot them.' And I said, 'Well can't you hear what you are saying?' That's killing them, you're being crazy.' And, I went home from the party and thought 'Yeah, but everything's like that. It's crazy.' We're all the same. I mean, badness in people is in us; people think we're not bad, but we are. We're all capable of doing things if we think it's right. And it might be wrong."
For any Renaissance fans out there that don't already know, Betty Thatcher passed away on 15 August 2011 after a long battle with cancer. She wrote almost all of the lyrics for the group, especially during their most popular and productive period in the 1970s. From: https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858686059/
