Gaia

Allow me to start by saying that I grew up listening to these guys and they will always be one of my favorite folk bands, next to Elvenking. Except that Elvenking is actual metal, while Mägo de Oz will probably fail to satisfy your heavy metal needs due to their bad studio mixing. Gaia is also extremely long so if you're not used to 10 minute long ballads you might find this boring and quite uninteresting.


One of the best aspects is Jose Andrea's falsetto vocals that will remind you of Helloween, except a little whinier. Songs like Gaia, La Costa del silencio and Alma stand out in this aspect since Jose Andrea's style is prominent. Not to mention the lyrics that are quite entertaining as well, talking about the Spanish conquest and Gaia (planet Earth being a living being as a whole). So vocal-wise this album is really good and really competitive as well.


Not let's talk about the guitar department. Even though the album is filled with catchy rock n roll riffs and clever solos, the guitars don't sound heavy or metal at all. Guitars have a very soft and harmless tone, making the songs sound very bland, which is very disappointing due to the fact that most of the songs have a very epic feeling. Take Gaia, for example. It's really long and epic with powerful lyrics and epic riffs. If only guitars had a more crunchy, aggressive heavy metal distortion such as Manowar's or Elvenking's then it would be easily comparable with other epic bands such as Rhapsody of fire. And that's one of the reasons why I gave this album such a low score; it just doesn't sound metal enough. Although you should give the guitrists credit for they really know how to shred.


Moving to the bass, I'm sure the bassist has a lot of talent. He really has, I can tell because of the endless melodies and clever riffs he's able to pull, but he still needs a lot of improvement, since there's barely any deep bass sound, making the songs sound even weaker. The bass sound needs to stand out a little bit more.


And finally the mediocre drums that make the songs sound utterly bland. Why? the drums aren't properly mixed since the snare sounds too loud and the bass drum is barely noticeable. Txus is not exactly a great drummer but he knows what he does and can perform very solid beats. I just don't like how the drum kit sounds. It sounds perfect for folk rock or progressive rock (which isn't bad) but this is METAL. Also the cymbals aren't very prominent, so the entire album's dynamics are almost non-existent.


In conclusion, is not the musicianship what makes this album mediocre, but rather the way the whole album is mixed. Every instrument sounds too clean and inoffensive, making you think this album was mixed with pop music quality.

A folk metal album lasting almost 75 minutes is rare enough to be underlined. While such a length wouldn’t be a single bit surprising dealing with a prog or doom release, one may wonder if, in this precise case, Mägo de Oz hadn’t been willing to embrace far too much than what they were actually able to. Indeed, even after several listens one thing remains incontestable: Gaia is too long.

There are two different ways of recording an excessively lengthy album: first by recording few, but overlong songs, then by recording a huge amount of short but uninteresting tracks. Here it seems Mägo de Oz combined both: there are too many tracks, which means a couple of them are useless fillers, and most of them are too long, at least by folk metal standards. There are few real fillers actually, apart from the instrumental/orchestral intro (which alone clocks at not less than FOUR minutes) and the very common El Atrapasueños. What is all the most a pity, as this means each of the ten remaining songs had the potential of becoming an excellent track. But finally how many excellent tracks are there here? That’s the question.

The fourth track Alma is a standard example of the disease which seems to plague this whole work. It begins very strongly with a high-paced, almost rock-ish violin tune in the typical Skyclad-like fashion, and indeed the song remains lively until a slower and completely useless keyboard-driven instrumental part which drags on for more than two minutes, which eventually gives an overall song length of 6:40. No further explanation is necessary: just reduce all the instrumental shit to a standard guitar or violin solo and you’ll obtain a perfect 4:40 long folk metal hit. Well, this song actually exists: this is precisely the following La Costa del Silencio, certainly the best track here, and the most reminding of earlier Mägo de Oz. Another noticeable track is the instrumental La Leyenda de la Llorona, which may exhibit nothing really metal with its handful of flutes and all, but is nonetheless a charming, original tune.

For the rest, what has been said of Alma could be said of almost every other track, and of course especially of the two eleven minutes long opening and closing tracks, which would have been fairly decent if reduced to half their length, but here are too much sleep-inducing to catch one’s attention until the end, in spite of their tempo switches, grand piano parts and whatever you want. The case of La Rosa de los Vientos is a bit different as it’s one of the two ballads of the album, and actually, it’s an excellent one (unlike Si te Vas which is one of the weakest songs), which isn’t so common. The problem is a ballad, as good as it may sound, always has to be sustained by the rest of the album. That meaning, if the album is overall boring and uninteresting, there’s little chance anyone would lend an ear to a ballad, and that’s exactly what’s happening here – fuck, ANOTHER slow song! is what most listeners will think, skipping the track without thinking more about it.

So much wasted potential is all the more frustrating that the musicians are far from being bad. Singer Jose Andrea especially is almost more supportable than on other Mägo de Oz releases, though I still highly doubt he has ever taken singing lessons. While remaining high-pitched, his voice now reminds more of a human being than of a raped kitten, and he manages to stay in tune most of time. Spanish may still sound a tad shocking as a language on a metal release, but one rapidly gets used to it. The band may also sometimes overuse keyboards (more precisely, Hammond organs), but I can live with it – only on the third track La Conquista they sound totally out of place.

No, you should have understood by now, the only problem with this album is, IT’S TOO DAMN LONG!

Highlights: La Costa del Silencio, La Leyenda de la Llorona, La Rosa de los Vientos (yes, really)

After hearing their previous releases this one hurts a bit as it shows some sort of "commercialism" in many of their tracks and the overall appearance of the group itself. This may be because Mago de Oz achieved a lot of popularity in their own country and that Finisterra was pretty well received. Anyway, this is a review and not as history lesson so let's go to what matters: Gaia.

What do they offer here? Another conceptual album, this time about how the brute and terrible spanish conquerors laid to waste entire civilizations in America. They also went to the echological side with all the Gaia trend (which may scare the hell out all the metalheads that hate such new age-like topic).

In terms of musical production things here are way better than previous releases (the two instrumental tracks are beautiful... but not metal in my honest opinion). This leads to the main issue of the record: Where in hell are the guitars? They are there, yes but they sound generic most of the time. Both riffs and solos have that feeling of "I've heard this before", also it features a suspicious song called "Van a rodar cabezas" which is a rip off of Judas Priest's song "Some heads are gonna roll" but it's hard to find similarities as the folky elements invade it all.
It seems that we have a musical step back in the songwriting too, which feels quite simple (if you know spanish you may understand this as "Si te vas" is a good example of how to ruin a song title...)
Other than that, the two epics of the album ("Gaia" and "La Venganza de Gaia") are probably the best songs they ever did and probably the ones you will always hear from this album. "La Conquista" is... just cheesy and I concurr it seems like it came right out of a videogame battle theme, which is very W-R-O-N-G. The rest of the songs are quite average (being "La Rosa de los Vientos" a nice ballad that, AGAIN, has 0 metal and explains a bit more that "commercial" feeling mentioned at the beginning).

Thus, here we have a quite erratic release that is defining the direction where the group is aiming. Good songs, nice and (WARNING) catchy melodies, some generic metal mixed with the folk stuff here and there but many ups and downs to be a classic. Get it just for the two epic ones and give a chance to the rest but you've been warned.

Normally, when I see the term "folk metal" I assume the album in question is, at some point. going to remotely resemble metal in some way. Not so in this case. Rather than take generic power metal and slap the Lucky Charms jingle on top of it, this band has opted for the much less tread inverse.

Other than the title track, this album contains next to no guitars whatsoever, and when it does they have more in common with Bon Jovi and Europe than anything I'd consider "metal". Simplistic background riffing, the occasional generic solo and that's it. Now, I don't exactly expect folk to be balls-out thrash or anything, but god damn guys. If you want to be considered metal, you could at least try a little bit harder.

However, the bass is much higher in the mix than is standard, oftentimes wresting the lead away from the guitars and using very atypical rhythms somewhat akin to sea shanties. I was rather impressed by the bassist's handling of the guitarist's absolute incompetence, so I'll say they more or less broke even here. As is usual for a band related to folk or power in any way, the drums are just there, holding the traditional uptempo 4/4 beat and doing little else.

This band does make heavy, nearly excessive, use of keyboards, flutes, violins and anything else they can get ahold of. The violins are extremely well done, reminding me at times of Yasunori Mitsuda's work on Tsugunai and Chrono Cross, but other times sounding just a tad too repetitive. The flutes are used sparingly with only two or three Jethro Tull-esque solos to be found. As is standard with keyboards, when they accent the other instruments they sound alright... but when they're the only thing going alongside the guitars I feel like I'm listening to the Black Mages album again.

The vocalist is, to be honest, one of the better Spanish speaking ones I've heard. Normally it's a chore to get through any album with a Spanish singer because the language sounds atrocious over metal to me, but this guy somehow has made it work. His effete voice and nice high range have definitely helped me in crossing that language barrier. To give a comparison, I suppose the closest person I could name would be Roy Khan, but a little stronger, more emotive and with a bit more range.

This band, overall, has two sounds. When they try to go fast and not rely on the folky aspects they sound like a bad Europe knock-off playing Final Fantasy battle music, and I am 90% certain the main key/guitar line in the track "La Conquista" was used for the boss fight in some video game. This is bad. However, the slower more sober pieces, often accompanied by the violins, properly played keys and the singer's rich voice, are truly a high point in folk music in general, though sadly few and far between. Yes, the band does mix and mingle the two, but the gamer elements just kill most of the songs.

The sole highlight of this album, and the one I can heartily recommend, is La Costa Del Silencio. Combining the aforementioned atypical bassline, the violin, some acoustic guitar, piano, the singer's voice and an awesome choral breakdown; this song is probably one of the best if not THE best folk song I've witnessed this year. It truly captures the essence of what I believe a folk song should sound like, and calling it magnificent wouldn't be giving it enough credit. This song alone is more than enough reason for me to keep the album around and take the time to find their other releases. Note that I didn't say folk metal though, so don't run off thinking it's going to be another Elvenking.

Overall, this album has it's extreme highs and lows, but shows a lot of potential. They've got the folk part down, but the metal needs a whole lot of work.