Band:	Magica
Album:	The Scroll Of Stone
Style:	Symphonic power metal
Release date:	2003
A review by:	Jeff

01. The Wish
02. A Blood Red Dream
03. The Sun Is Gone
04. The Sorcerer
05. Road To The Unknown
06. Daca
07. E Magic
08. The Silent Forest
09. Mountains Of Ice
10. The Key
11. The Scroll Of Stone
12. Redemption

Magica is a new Female fronted Power Metal band. They come from Romania and like a lot of other young bands these day, they try to surf on the wave of this new trend of Metal bands with a female singer. But everybody is not Kelly Slater or Nightwish if you prefer, and that's really easy to be crushed by the wave?

"The Scroll Of Stone" is the first album of this young Romanian band. If some songs seem to be interesting especially in reason of the Folk elements, the level of this album is not very high, near of average. In fact the album suffer of a real lack of originality, I mean that we already have a LOT of bands which play this kind of music, then if you produce something with is not really new, not original and in addition not really nice, that's hard really to win any awards. That' s the case of this album, first the songs are really average but in addition the album really suffer of an amateurish production. That's a bit hard to hear all the parts, all the sounds of the music but in addition the members of the band are a bit "poor" musically speaking. The solos for example can be good or absolutely wrong, that's really weird, and that's same with the female singer who has a good voice, but who will forever suffer of the comparison with the famous singers of the style. I know that's not easy to sing with a symphonic voice, but sometime that's just not possible and when we have a nice voice and that's the case of Ana that's maybe good thing to only sing with a classic voice, no need to push the limit? And anyway that's always possible to progress with training, and it was a bit short for this album I think?
This is a concept album, a pure fantasy story with a princess some scrolls and demons, all that is really cliché sorry but it' s good to try to imagine some original stories. I love Fantasy but that's boring to always find this subject with 99% of the Power Metal bands. It could be a good thing to turn the page I think [and not only for Magica ]. However I must congratulate the band which at least got the good idea to ask to the rally good Luis Royo, a famous Fantasy drawer, to do the nice cover of the album.

Well well, "The Scroll Of Stone" is a first album ok, but really it was not a real good start, as I said, some parts of the music are good, especially the folk elements in the music, but this album is really average, and that's a shame because there is some potentiality in this band. Forget it please excepted if you are a die-hard fan of bands with Female singer?