MAGDALENA

Interesting, but not entirely convincing symphonic prog band from Japan. Another one shot efford from the land of the rising sun. Contrary to eastern bands at the time, prog did thrieve in the 80´s there. I found so many great bands recently that appered at that decade. But Magdalena clearly was more tentive than most. I believe that, with time, they could reach higher grounds. Certainly the potential was there: nice instrumentation, green, but somewhat decent, songwriting, good arrangements. Yet, nothing to write home about it. Celebrated singer Megumi Tokuhisa does have some classical technique, but I found her voice to be more annoying than really good. In the end that´s the album´s biggest problem.

It´s not that the CD is a total failure. Those guys were skilled musicians for sure. Yet they were still feeling their way to a very own sound. Production also does not help a lot, being only average at best. But the histrionic vocals are hard to bear. I´m very fond of female singers in prog, I even like Kate Bush (and she is not my favorite kind of singing voice). Tokuhisa unfortunatly goes a little over the top way too many times in Magdalena. And the band lacked enough songwriting skills to compensate this weakness. If they could get over those issues in future times remains a mystery.

I tried hard to like this CD, but clearly Magdalena is one of the few cases of a japanese prog band that I´m not sorry they didn´t release a follow up. This one is recommended for collectors and hardcore fans only.