The Twenty Seven Club (TMRCD0913, 2013)
Welsh band Magenta has gone back to its roots and delivered a state of the art concept album that will satiate the thirst for real progressive rock. At a time when the progressive rock realm is full of imposters playing radio friendly AOR and heavy metal disguised as progressive rock, Magenta presents the real thing, the good stuff.
The Twenty Seven Club refers to great rock and blues musicians who died early in their careers, at the age of 27. The Twenty Seven Club contains only 6 lengthy tracks. The album opens with the vibrant ‘The Lizard King’ dedicated to Jim Morrison.
Next comes one of the highlights of the album, ‘Ladyland Blues’ which is a tribute to Jimi Hendrix. This piece with Echoes of 1970s-era Yes and Genesis features outstanding creative guitar work by Chris Fry on electric and slide guitars, the superb vocals of Christina Booth who stands out on lead vocals and beautiful overdubs, and of course the word of multi-instrumentalist and composer Rob Reed on a wide range of keyboards, bass and various other instruments.
‘Pearl,’ the homage to Janis Joplin, has a slow bluesy feel with Christina Booth’s engaging voice and David Gilmour-style guitars.
‘Stoned’ is state of the art prog dedicated to Brian Jones. Chris Fry demonstrates that is one of the finest guitar players from the Steve Howe school. Christina Booth has an amazing chameleonic voice that shows why she is one of the best voices in the British progressive rock scene. In this piece she sometimes recalls Jon Anderson. Rob Reed adds memorable synth solos. The epic dual guitar and synth finale is pure symphonic rock gold.
Grunge star Kurt Cobain also gets a piece, titled ‘The Gift.’ The track begins with symphonic keyboards and vocals that develop into an epic with more tremendous slide guitar work by Chris Fry and gorgeous vocals by Christina Booth, backed by majestic layers of keyboards.
As one would expect ‘The Devil at the Crossroads’ is the tribute to legendary bluesman Robert Johnson. It delivers more terrific electric guitar, vocals and keyboard work.
“The new album has been five years in the making and I have tried to take the best elements of all the previous Magenta albums to craft the best collection of songs I could and I think this has been achieved and is a return to our progressive rock roots,” says Rob Reed. “Only a few people have heard the album thus far but all have agreed that this is the best Magenta album to date”.
Guest musicians include drummer Andy Edwards. “For the last few years I have been very keen to work with Andy. I was a huge fan of his playing when he was with IQ and Frost,” adds Rob.
The album comes with a bonus DVD that includes the complete album in 5.1 surround mix, a documentary about the making of The Twenty Seven Club and a promo music video.
Magenta has delivered a first class progressive rock album. We all need to support great works like this.
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