Review: Seid - Magic Handshake (2012)

Artist: Seid
Album: Magic Handshake
Year: 2012
Label: Blackwidow Records

Review: Diego Camargo

Rate:

Thoughts: The influence here is obvious to everyone, it’s Hawkwind. But it’s not a copy and paste kinda of album, which is very common on Prog Rock in our days, this norwegian band have personality.

Space Rock in general bother me a bit, usually the bands just play some nonsense sound that goes nowhere, lot of jams and some ethereal vocals and thats it. That’s a space rock album usually. Not here. The song structure matter more.

Vocal melodies are a important deal on Magic Handshake (2012), third album from the band, released by the italian label Black Widow Records in CD and Vinyl.

I confess that I laughed a bit with the beginning of ‘Space Pirates Return’, but just because that’s something you don’t listen everyday in a song, after the first ‘shock’ I surrender myself to their sound.

Like in the delicious ‘The True Merry Poppers’ and the fuzz heavy overall sound, lots of vocals and an almost pop melody during verses and a crazy bit with synths at the final bit.
The band have a very good hand when it comes to write fast passages in a Hard Rock way with good melodies and lots of space synths.

‘Trôn’ is very much indian music oriented in the intro, but again, it’s influence, not just copied sounds and copied formulas.
Soon the band enters in a more traditional Prog Rock sound, and more and more the tracks comes alive and well with a lot of vintage keyboards.

‘Birds’ is a song that I could hear a full brass arrangement on my head to it. They used it, but just in a ‘shy’ way. It could be even more interesting than already is.

Great guitars, great keyboards, a very good bass tone, a real drum sound (the thing that most annoys me in the present musical productions) and lots of vocals. This album was a surprise for me, but a good one, I wasn’t expecting anything good coming from a mix of a norwegian band (country that has no tradition in Space Rock as far as I know) and a dark gothic label. Good for me I was wrong. This is a very good surprise for 2012.

Buy it HERE!