FINISTERRA

one of the best albums made by this tremendous band. this is one hell of a concept double album that will knock you out of you're socks (considering that you speak spanish and wearing socks) or just by their playing (don't expect to hear gentle giant-ish virtuosos, but still good playing). and a big plus for the beautiful melodies.

in this album you can find something for every taste in here or at least a song. the mixture of folk, metal and a wee bit of prog, and the balance of the 3 styles make it an easy listen if you are into more folk prog or a good ol' metal sound.

the concept of the album is about a man in the medieval ages who gets paid by a mysterious guy who wants him to company him show him the way. at the half of the story the man finds a good place to forget about everything and starts a new life. years later he went again on the road to finish the job. I won't spoil the end so you have to read it or translate it to figure it out.

there are a lot of great songs and no filer in this album but without a doubt the best song in the album is the 14 minute (epic?) song, and probably the best song they've ever made. Every lyric in the album is well written and very philosophical, don't expect gibberish in the songwriting.

this is truly an excellent album made by MAGO DE OZ. in my opinion they're second best album they have made after Gaia. if you're into metal, prog folk, or just trying to find something different from the pack, then give them a much needed listen.

prog on. from Puerto Rico.

Well for my first experience with MDO, I don't think I fell upon the best album to find out what this group, is about, but it was the only one my library has. So I had a week to judge out this double album, but I must say that some 10 mins of listening to the first few tracks, then zapping from one track to the next, FFWding through every succeeding ones, my mind quickly grasped what "the deal was" and started thinking about getting the fondue set from the cupboard, for the cheesy storm under-whelming me. Stuck between an unimaginative folk, a pale copy of symphonic prog and a generally progmetal (or at least hard prog) overall attitude, with a done-1000000000-times-before concept and an artwork to shame it, this is the kind of album that HURTS the name of prog, because it represents all of the clichés of today's prog groups and steals plenty from their ancestors (the flute passages sounding like sub-par Tull amongst others), not escaping ridicule along the way.

Don't get me wrong, I haven't heard (or more likely very partially skipped through) an awful album, far from it. I mean, these guys obviously put a lot of work behind such a "project", but really before making such an investment, they should consider the need to actually invest time and money into such a needless and ill-advised concept album. One might think that they most likely did it for themselves, which is fair enough, but does the average proghead really need the lost of time in such inessential products as this one (let alone time, but cash as well). The "folk" is very cliché and reductive, always around the jig- type, their metal a bad mix of Hair Metal and Europe (the group) -AOR and is a bit laughable, while the symphonic parts are nearly as cliché as their folk;

I have no idea if their other records are any cheesier than this one, but I can say that this double-fondue dose gave me no envy to check out their other albums. Best avoided, 'less you like heavy stomachs, gummy teeth, reeking breath and difficult digestion.