Band:	Wizard
Album:	Magic Circle
Style:	Heavy metal, Power metal
Release date:	2005
Guest review by:	Bas

01. Enter The Magic Circle (Intro)
02. Fire And Blood
03. Call Of The Wild
04. Death Is My Life
05. On Your Knees
06. Metal
07. Uruk-Hai
08. Circle Of Steel
09. Warriors Of The Night
10. No Way Out
11. The Magic Goes on
12. Don't Say Goodbye
13. Master Of The Holy [bonus]
14. Sons Of The North [bonus]

After a few very old school sounding heavy metal albums and then a power metal album, Wizard again gives us something new. It's heavy metal again but faster and more professional then their previous efforts in the genre, they also lost their old school touch. Another new thing is the very professional sounding production; it still isn't perfect but does sound very good now. The drumming is mostly fast and one-sided this time but since the main bulk of the music is by the riffs this is acceptable.

Speaking of riffs, the riffing is sometimes extremely furious at times on this album. Seems like Wizard tried to sound a bit heavier on this album. And it worked. So the riffing is more violent, the drumming is fast, the power metal elements are replaced by heavy metal elements again and the production is better. Next to these changes the music also has more variation than it had in the other albums. In my review for Odin I said that the band's music is extremely unoriginal. This isn't the case anymore, (still unoriginal, but not extremely) however the lyric's originality has suffered instead. It almost gives the impression that the band sat together and decided to bring together as many different cliches as possible. Songs about metal, songs about witch burnings, songs about partying, motorcycles, death, Uruk Hais, magic, norse mythology and more are present here.

The guitarist and bassist aren't the most talented musicians ever but they did master making extremely catchy riffs and also a few enjoyable solos here and there, however nothing which stands out from a musically technical point of view. The most talented part of the band is still the vocalist though. Switching effortlessely between low parts and high shrieks and an occasional growled sentence. The keyboard isn't used this time, but instead of that we get a few soundclips on some songs. Fortunately none are really annoying.

The cover art is graced by an alchemist with a rather intoxicated facial expression and the members seem to try to look as metal as possible on the band photo. But if you can look past all the cheese present in the image you can see a band that is truely devoted to their music. This isn't anything new and this isn't anything creative; hundreds, if not thousands, of bands have already done this before. But Wizard is clearly one of the best of them. So if you are into heavy metal with catchy riffs, fast drumming vocals that are rich in variation and you don't care too much about cliches in lyrics, then do yourself a favour and get this CD.