JESÚS DE CHAMBERÍ

Along with La Leyenda de La Mancha, Jesús de Chamberí is the best Mägo the Oz album... It easily surpases their last four studio efforts!

After their irregular debut, the group recruited a new singer and they took a long time to develope their next release... Three years of composition, arrangements and recordings! And the results were really good. The production is far from being the best of their career, but the sound is not bad. Except the weak Mohammed's violin sound and the bad Jose's vocalization (sometimes is really hard to understand what he's saying...), the instruments are not bad. Not spectacular, but functional.

The style of the album is really variated... Being a Rock Opera, they needed different types of moods for the songs, and this way we have some Iron Maiden oriented tracks (Jesús de Chamberí, El Fin del Camino...), 80's hard rock anthems (Hasta que tu Muerte nos Separe, Judas...), the typical Mägo de Oz's folk elements (El Cuco y la Zíngara, Jiga Irlandesa....), classical music influences (Czardas, the end of Hasta que tu Muerte nos separe...), the usual Mägo's folk rock (La Canción de Pedro, La Última Cena...) or rock n' roll mixed with cabaret (Domingo de Gramos...)

So this amount of variety makes this album easy and funny tu listen to... But there is not prog here. Just variated hard rock with a lot of folk and heavy influences. But not prog metal, folks.

The concept of the album is really curious... It's about a Jesus Christ's comeback in the spanish city of Madrid, in a neighborhood called Chamberí, where he preaches about a necessary change in Christianity. I think it's not necessary to say that this album hardly criticises the Catholic Church, in a not very polite way. Some people can find it annoying and offensive... But I find it just funny! The drummer Chus's lyrics are very good, not so overloaded and full of vulgarity like the lyrics he writes today. So if you understand spanish, you'll surely enjoy with this album's concept.

Best songs: Jesús de Chamberí (good riff and violin melodies...), El Ángel Caído (very funny folky rock track...), La Canción de Pedro (the better track of the album, and a band's classic...), El Cantar de la Luna Oscura (beautiful ballad) and El Fin del Camino (the longer and most complex song in the album, with some Iron Maiden's influences...)

Conclusion: this album is fantastic, and is a great example of what this band was able to do, before transforming themselves in the commercial and hypocrite band they are today... This album has more quality and is more sincere than the rest of the albums of the band, with the exception of the even better La Leyenda de la Mancha. So this is an excellent release... But being not prog in my opinion, this can not be an excellent additon to any prog music collection.

My personal rating: ****

ProgArchives rating: ***

MAGO DE OZ continues to prove me wrong in different ways: on one hand, I used to think of them as a repetitive if-you've-heard-one-song-you've-heard-them-all power metal kind of band, which they clearly aren't, as they add elements of all kinds of music to their sound and create very entertaining power metal songs mixed with folk and even traditional rock n' roll; on the other hand, I used to agree with their status as a prog-metal band. Now I'm not so sure.

Jesus de Chamberi is a metal opera, but unlike other works that share this definition, here we only have one singer who tells us of all the details and the events. An adaptation of Jesus Christ's life to the fiery Spain of MAGO DE OZ, the story is interesting, entertaining, irreverent. The music that accompanies it changes style as easily as the main character changed water into wine: from pure power metal to folk metal to bar-rock n' roll in the blink of an eye. Some songs lack any distinctive elements but some manage to shine through ("Hasta que tu muerte nos separe", "El fin del camino", "Jesus de Chamberi").

The album is uneven and difficult to categorize as progressive since the music is rather very traditional in its form. What could bridge that distance could be the constant addition of elements of different styles of music into one cohesive unity. In the end, Jesus de Chamberi is a very enjoyable work that needs no genre to be appreciated. Not as good as their later Gaia, I'll give it 3 stars over 5.