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Wait what? This isn't MMA? And JADE WARRIOR is a venerable prog rock group? Someone wake me now! No, let me sleep, it feels soooooooo gooooood. I'll rate this when I'm awake and can feel at peace with my choice.

For every poignant RUNRIG anthem there is a tepid WOLFSTONE regurgitation; for every James Joyce rivaling POGUES romp is a warmed over hand me down from TEMPEST. For every well sequenced and executed ballad or metal fest by MAGO DE OZ is a frenetic and soulless ballad or metal fest (both sound pretty much the same anyway) by TUATHA DE DANANN that conveys a failure to assimilate the virtues of the folk genre prior to alloying it. Most of this is a crass and hard to forgive exercise in amplifying and speeding up jigs or reels, or dressing a death growl in a kilt. Songs like "Bella Nature", "Lover of the Queen", "Land's Revenge" and "Arrival" are even worse than that and essentially torturous. Sometimes after a minute or so of tentative intro, they realize they have locked themselves in and the only way out is with a hammer and a groan. The exceptions would be the lighter "Land of Youth", the guttural but rousing "Believe it's True" and the atypical and more traditionally celtic title cut with female vocals. But the damage inflicted by the worst this group has to offer neutralizes these gains many times over.

Perhaps the band's inactivity since 2004 means that it has been offered as a sacrifice to Danu, the water goddess from which the it derives its name, and she has accepted selflessly for the benefit of bands like DANU and DE DANANN, not to mention listeners like me.

NEKTAR - Magic is a Child

Whatever distinctiveness NEKTAR might have claimed in their earlier years had been vanishing for a couple of releases, and their main calling card was Roy Albrighton, who left after "Recycled". A couple of years later, with a new guitarist Dave Nelson, they emerged with more democratic structure and their first album with no redeeming qualities.

The 1970s have a bad reputation among some. While some of this rap is unjustified, a listen to "Magic is a Child" points out all the pitfalls of a decade growing long in the tooth. Indeed, this could have been produced by any number of non progressive 1970s bands, most of them one-offs. This was music nobody wanted, and it's safe to say that only NEKTAR's pedigree saved it from complete obscurity. But that reputation was built on their first few albums, particularly "Remember the Future", and this 1977 disk bears utterly no resemblance to that classic. Gone are the sunshiney melodies, harmonic riffs, fantastic lyrics and interconnected themes. All that remains are rote 1970s guitar solos, trite tunes, faux-rousing choruses and ineffective and tasteless humour. Even the "harpsichord" in the title cut sounds treated and released.

After I scored with "Remember the Future", I kept looking in vain for some other sign of the force behind that concept, and kept being disappointed, but the search ended here for good. "Magic is a Child" only its mother could love.