Magica – Dark Diary

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Dark Diary, Magica’s fifth album to date, blazes into life straight from the start, introducing itself with a fast guitar riff before hitting a strong steady power metal groove. A promising start however soon loses momentum when singer Ana Mladinovici joins the fray. Ana’s heavily accented and generally flat style is uninteresting at best, nasal and irritating at worst, lacking both the power and grace to carry the band’s otherwise decent power metal. One can’t help but feel that if the band had a powerhouse songstress similar to Benedictum‘s Veronica Freeman, Amberian Dawn‘s Heidi Parviainen or Sinergy‘s Kim Goss, we’d all be much more aware of this band. As it stands though, Magica present an album full of well-executed and well-written songs, covering all the usual power metal subjects (even going as far as to geekily reference ‘World of Warcraft’ with We Are Horde). Unfortunately it’s all spoiled by that noticeable weak link making the album difficult to enjoy, which is a great shame.

Written by James Donovan
More: 2010, Albums, Female-fronted, Power Metal, Quick.Play Reviews, Magica