SEVEN

This is a fantastic CD! Maybe the best CD I bought in a long time. Great synphonic music played by superb musicians and sung by an outstanding female singer. Rob Reed is one fo the best songwriters around and the band is simply perfect. All songs are prog gems, with no exception. The more you hear the more you like it. Magenta's debut was very good but something was missing, or maybe it was not simply mature enough. This does not happen at all with Seven, where everything falls into place seamslessly.

Magenta does not hide its influences, on the contrary, they paid homage to them.In almost every track they give big clues: on Glutony the Yes opening guitar-like introduction and the backing vocals are so similar I had to look back on the CD credits to see if Jon anderson or Chris Squire did not made a special guest appearence! On Envy, the Renaissance influence comes forward (specially on the piano style and chorus) and they play a little piece of Genesis "Entangled" (nice!). On Greed they cite Simon & Garfunkel on the lyric. And so goes on. Strangely they still make original good music, they never sound derivative, which is a blessing. They do not fear to be compared because they know they are quite unique.

Unfortunatly the band did not persue this path when they released their last CD, Home. But that's another story. Seven is simply perfect and is one of my favourite CDs of anytime. I could not rate it less than what this already classic CD deserves. I could write endelessly about this music, but do yourself a favor and hear Seven. Let the music do the talk.

If you like excellent symphonic prog or just good music in general, I highly recommend Seven.