PAGAN ALTAR — Mythical & Magical (review)

PAGAN ALTAR — Mythical & Magical album cover Album · 2006 · Heavy Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
Warthur
Once more drawing on the band's extensive backlog of songs from their original late 1970s and early 1980s run, Mythical and Magical feels a bit less cohesive than the preceding Lords of Hypocrisy. Part of this comes from the somewhat more diverse sound; whereas I understand that Lords of Hypocrisy was conceived as a concept album (the followup to Volume 1/Judgement of the Dead, in fact), the material here was written between 1977 and 1983, a much longer span than either of the other two Pagan Altar albums, and so a wider range of styles are represented due to the band's evolution over that time.

On top of that, it feels like they're beginning to scrape the bottom of the barrel here, tossing in filler numbers which pad out the running time but haven't stood the test of time as well as the stronger pieces. There's still entertaining moments on here, but I'd tackle either of their preceding albums before coming to this.
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