Review Magica - Wolves and Witches 2008

When listening to this record I always tried to figure out from where the band was hailing from listening to the accent of the female vocalist. Her accent made me think, either Finnish, Russian or German and sometimes that accent bothers me, other times it doesn’t but usually it is there as a reminder that at least this female vocalist does not speak English as her primary language and that probably holds true for the rest of the group as well.

Another point to make is that this band has no association to the arch enemy of Scrooge McDuck from the Donald Duck comics. Musically this band use melodic style metal, a sub-genre usually called power metal. Fantasy metal is something that comes to mind though this band is not really writing that kind of lyrics even though it might sound like it. It is female fronted as I have already pointed out but it is not in the operatic style of some melodic metal bands fronted by females but still.

Quality wise I would have to say that it is a record of mixed feelings, it has many ups and downs and many good things as well as things that annoy at the same time. The accent of the singer is one thing that annoy, but at the same time it is good, same goes for her voice. Sometimes I can overlook the vocal flaws, other times I cannot, as I said it is a mixed bag this record. It has many good points but also too many flaws so it is hard to either like or dislike this record, I cannot really tell what I think about this record but the rating will end up in the middle anyway as the good parts are good and the bad are bad, in the end it evens out.

Opening Don’t Kill Me is a really nice opener and brings the whole thing into a good spirit and the same goes for the next track that is called They Stole the Sun. Then it is very much up and down all the way through the record, the top notch is probably the track called Just For 2 Cents which is a really nice and catchy track where the horrible accent can be ignored even though it is quite prominent.

In the beginning I pointed out about my thinking around the origin of this band by thinking of the accent. After reading the notes I realise that the band is from Romania and have already managed to release three albums before this one, and apparently they have also had their international breakthrough last year, which for some reason I didn’t notice. Well that is about it, almost. The thing is that the band has also apparently received reviews from leading journalists stating that the band is the perfect mix between Nightwish and Edenbridge which I don’t agree with or state but then again I am not a leading journalist, just a guy writing about music and does a lot of other stuff. I Cannot really agree with those statements but then again the journalists points are probably not really like that, they are usually modified to fit the label agenda but I am not accusing AFM of anything.

Still, I prefer Magica as the enemy of Scrooge McDuck rather than a band.

HHHHHHH

Written on 12/15/2008