Tapio's Magica Review

Shortly: Magica must be the best album I've ever heard!

The album consist of 13 songs and a narration telling the Magica story. With Magica Dio returns back to the classic Dio sound after having more heavy, industrial style for a couple of albums. Still, the album is very fresh, it isn't Holy Diver part two or anything!

The album opens with an intro titled Discovery. Discovery gives short background to the album concept - the album tells about the battle of good and evil in an alien world. There's a frozen world called Blessing - and under the ice there is a forgotten book called Magica. Magica is discovered and its spells are used to make the world better. However, an alien group of Evilsyde attacks the celebrating world and starts to turn everyone not willing to join Evilsyde into stone.

Drums and heavy keyboards of the song Magica Theme follow. All the keyboards on the album were played by Ronnie and Craig, so the band on the album has again four members like in the Holy Diver days.

Lord Of The Last Day is the first song with lyrics on this album. Lord Of The Last Day tells about the plans of Shadowcast, one of the aliens, the root of all the evil. Lyrics like

I love the night
So many shadows
Unholy light
Putting out the spark
Leave 'em in the dark - Forever

probably tell what's going on in the song. There's quite an interesting element towards the end of the song as a choir of children sings.

Next comes the first single and video song of the album, Fever Dreams. In Fever Dreams one of the opponents of Shadowcast, Eriel, tells what he is seeing and feeling about the situation. Eriel's afraid of what is going to happen, so he tries to tell himself that he's just dreaming - not very successfully.

Shadowcast and his evil crew start to turn people into stone in the Turn To Stone by killing their heart and soul. This is very a heavy and dark song, this combines the 1990s Dio style with the classic Dio style. "It's not how you live, it's how you die."

In Feed My Head Eriel somewhat realizes that his nightmares were indeed true. Eriel examines himself while he's waiting for his turn to be executed, searching again safety from the dreams.

Eriel has his own song too. He finally gives up dreaming and realizes he's going to get killed. But no! There still seems to be hope, he might have the chance to save everyone! It seems that he'll be able to fix everything, to prevent the Evilsyde forces from taking over. Then there's death.

However, even though Eriel's now dead and gone, there's still hope. There's a young man Challis who knows what to do. He's the only hope for the good. He's confident, he is sure he'll be able to fix things - "I am a rock and you are glass, never broken - never last, and if you're in my way I'll knock you down!"

Love is an unknown feeling to the aliens. As Long As It's Not About Love proves it may be so also with the humans. Magic can be associated with love, magic can be stronger than love and perhaps also love can be magic. The song tells about Challis' parents with Challis' mother's mouth.

Losing My Insanity begins with a beautiful guitar playing, and the song is quite beautiful also. Although rather strange as well, I'm not quite sure yet what I think about it. Sometimes life doesn't treat you so that you'll be able to have your insanity, sometimes the life requires you to drop the mask of insanity and makes you to become the one to save the others.

Otherworld ... The world might be saved, but quite much damage was done by Evilsyde forces. Otherworld is a place which has almost been destroyed and there are a lot of things to be corrected before things are again like they used to be. The world is in such bad state that even "Rainbows and blue skies are black and white."

Magica - Reprise tells how easy it is to forget to respect the good so that the evil won't take over. No-one sees the beauty before it is taken away, no-one sees an angel before it smashes to the ground, no-one gets to heaven before spending some time in hell. And not everyone gets there.

The aliens finally understand what they've should done in the first place - Magica should've been destroyed in the first place. However, although they lost this time, Lord Of The Last Day - Reprise tells that they're still in the shadows - forever.