MAGNA VICE

The 68-minute album is about a war veteran who's tortured by bad memories and hallucinations. Here and there some dialogue- like spoken parts try to increase the sense of the concept. A very good feature is the way tracks follow each other without pauses, thus making the whole a singular entity. The music is not downright aggressive or fast, or "Metallic"; it really sounds like good old classic heavy rock with just some modern touch added occasionally. Throughout the album the tension is quite strong and lacks notable variety in dynamics, and therefore, despite the tracks being mostly quite long (around 10 minutes), the whole is a bit too samey all the way. Another minus is that the vocals are there nearly all the time.

The band's own production is fairly good in my opinion. The group, three years old at the time of release, lacks the real originality but indeed shows a lot of potential. For possible future albums I wish they tried to compose with a wider pallette.

The drums are just too high in the mix, and after a while the snare drum becomes really annoying, but what really lets this album down are the vocals. The vocalist is very nearly a great singer, but not quite. So there are times when he sings just too high, or just slightly off, or often with a strident edge that really does cut through everything, but not in a good way. These guys do show some real promise, and there is no doubting that they have loads of ideas, but they need to work with a strong producer who can keep everything under control, and then we might get the album that is undoubtedly there, but this isn't it.