History & Biography This Romanian fantasy rock band was formed by Bogdan in the year 2002 in Constanta. Bat brought fellow Interitus Dei singer onboard and the newly minted group soon issued its debut, The Scroll Of Stone. The album demonstrated a symphonic level of aptitude. The band was soon voted as the 'best new band' in the domestic heavy metal magazine. Lghtseeker’s - first album featuring Emilian Burcea - release coincided with shows with international acts and was followed up by a contract with Germany’s AFM. In fact, the band's first concert was no earlier than 2003. A video called Live In Paris appeared in 2005. The band toured with After Forever, Nightmare, Apocalyptica and Leaves Eyes in Europe in 2006. In 2007, Ana Mladinovici toured with Axxis as a backing singer. The group issued its fourth album in the autumn of 2008. The group had earlier appeared on the All For Metal CD and DVD alongside the likes of Masterplan and Edguy. Romanian band Magica would release its 2012 album, Center Of The Great Unknown, on October 12th through AFM Records. Macovei had joined in 2011. The song Dacă 2012 was a self-cover version as the song had appeared on the debut album originally. Towards the end of 2012 Drummer Sebastian Natas left for poppier realms in 2013.
The band became quiet until the arrival of bassist Cristian Popescu and drummer Patrick Preda in 2020 and the 2021 demo, Little Box Of Echoes. It was merely a bunch of cover versions. Another demo was 2022's Lună Nebună. Bogdan and Cristian were spending more time with their other band, Dinfier.
The band was named after the Dio album of the year 2000.
Reviews MAGICA - THE SCROLL OF STONE - DIVENIA
There will be no prizes for guessing Magica's partiality to the swords and sorcery sub-genre of metal. The Rumanian band on the Mexican label makes its intentions clear with a shapely cover depicting a warrioress and a monolith beyond which awaits the band's operatic metal music. Furthermore, song titles like The Sorcerer, E Magic and Mountains Of Ice speak for themselves.
Fans of Nightwish and Rhapsody will recognize many familiar landmarks on The Scroll Of Stone. The band's repertoire consists of dramatically harmonic female opera-vocals alternated by fancy fret runs. The vocals are beautiful and the solos fancy, if not a tad repetitious. The male voice-overs have to go though. They do not cut it.
This stuff is hardly the sturdiest of metals, but there is a big market for stuff like this and fans of the aforementioned bands will like this. One question though, what happened to the wizard on the cover? - Ali "The Metallian"
MAGICA - HEREAFTER - LOCOMOTIVE
Nightwish is looking over its shoulder at these Romanian upstarts who have taken the basic goth pop opera vocals with keyboards formula and given it a professional edge. Fans of Nightwish, Within Temptation and even Epica or Kamelot will just devour Hereafter. The vocals never waiver in delivering like a straight arrow, although the duplication and dubbing is sometimes obvious. The vocals are a mix of the aforementioned European commercial delivery and progressive speed riffs free of grit. The previous albums had more of them it seems, but the male vocals make a showing towards the album’s end on a song called Energy For The Gods. The energy and the enthusiasms of this band are palpable but the run of the songs are too lightweight (one reminds one of Europe) and sterile to be of interest to metal or hard rock fans. Yeah, Kamelot groupies will dig this. - Anna Tergel
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