Want to cheer up a bit? You can do it by listening to 'Lightseeker', Romanian Magica's sophomore album. The debut 'The Scroll of Stone' (2002) is not familiar to me, but the new album is a full-band effort, as there is flesh and blood drummer and keyboardist in the ranks now.

Magica's music is very playful and cheerful power metal with Nightwish influences, and is symphonic in style. Female vocals aren't operatic as Tarja Turunen's, but Ana Mladinovici's voice is beautiful. Fragile yet powerful and truly spellbinding. Her voice fits perfectly, surprisingly, with hectic music, thanks to wonderful vocal melodies that tend to steal the show. Guitar is heavy and squealing a lot, reminding me a lot of that Finnish band, but at times played at speed of light or almost death metal way. Many a time, when a song is in action and there's no singing, guitar and synths are soloing like no tomorrow. Thankfully the pace is slower and more peaceful at times, because this playfullness can be suffocating, and songs are not overlong either. The music is cheerful and "fairytale-ish", best heard on 'Samhain', even though there's a darker side to this all too and same goes with lyrics. Magica's music is nothing new, but is a bit different mixture of familiar elements that works well enough.

Big, and it's almost destroying, defect about 'Lightseeker' is the production. It simply sucks, because it's too raw, suffocated and unbalanced. When the band's on their most playful mode, it tends to get chaotic. Worst thing is tingling the keyboards, which sound like toys but also gets over everything else (there's better keyboards in this, too). Another point is, that instruments do not really sound good with each other, they don't fit together soundwise. Playing is good and skillful, and fantastic vocals save a lot.

Hopefully the next release has a better sound, because there's a lot of potential in Magica and their music. Now I can recommend 'Lightseeker' only to fans of cheerful power metal: worth trying.

Rating: 6- (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
01/05/2005 13:58