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More than three years after electrifying the metal community with Journey Blind, an expertly crafted blend of doom, traditional metal and classic rock, Boston’s somewhat mysterious Magic Circle, have returned with Departed Souls. They haven’t really lost the mystery. Due to obligations with several other bands (Innumerable Forms, Sumerlands, Devil’s Dare, Stone Dagger, Lifeless Dark, Missionary Work, Pagan Altar), they rarely play live, and they still eschew social media. But on this latest album, the band looks further beyond its doomy foundations into the psychedelic world of prog to give us a powerfully mournful ode to those who have departed -- either by leaving this life or by leaving our lives.
However, Magic Circle is pretty blunt with their subject matter and artwork, which features a verdant, overgrown cemetery shown in the golden light of sunset. This is an album about death and endings, but the result is more bittersweet than maudlin, hopeful rather than despairing. A key reason for this is singer Brendan Radigan’s powerful voice, which could take the most mundane material and elevate it to the ethereal. There’s a good reason why he is often compared to the likes of Ronnie James Dio and Ian Gillan. His lyrics are poetic and kaleidoscopic, frequently invoking the seasons and the forces of nature as a sort of general lament on the plight of humanity.
The album opens with its title song, a Trouble-like medium-tempo head-bobber in which Radigan uses the wheel of the seasons to mourn a passing life.
Another harvest of the year
Echoing through time
Shaping the waves of the biosphere
With the cold wind’s sigh.
But Radigan is hardly the band’s only star. Guitarists Chris Corry and Renato Montenegro, trade evocative melodies, searing dual leads and chugging rhythms, often within the same song. It’s not unusual for them to be plodding on with a Sabbath-tinged riff, only to stop and indulge their inner Iron Maiden.
Magic Circle is a band that you can count on to mix things up. Several songs, including “Departed Souls” and “Valley of the Lepers,” follow this recipe. The album begins to unfold in an unexpected, but welcome way on the fourth song, “A Day Will Dawn Without Nightmares.” After a spacey intro, the song floats into an exotic, colorful melody with tablas and a retro-organ riff. Radigan croons about “haunting shadows,” a “glowing eventide” and “silhouetted memories.” It’s a very fitting divider for the album, which then becomes more progressive and a little less doomy, evoking Deep Purple more than Black Sabbath.
The band gives the listener a bit of a rest on “Bird City Blues,” a lush instrumental that clocks in at barely over a minute long, and includes the sound of rolling thunder in the distance. After that, the last song, “Hypnotized,” builds slowly, with Radigan coming in at top volume and power, and leading the listener on a roller coaster ride of emotions. As the riffs crescendo below him, Radigan lets loose:
Never to have or to want.
The will crumbles all.
Mortar and brick battlements
Finally fall.
Hypnotized.
And I hold back the hands of time.
For an album about death, Departed Souls leaves the listener feeling peaceful and uplifted.