Bandcamp Magic is a record that wants you to know it was made in a room, not a laboratory. The Prague trio Acid Row deal in raw, garage-grade stoner-doom shot through with heavy psych and noise, and their album Magic, a loose concept about power as illusion and deception, sounds exactly as unvarnished as that suggests: fuzz piled on fuzz, a growling bass driving everything, and a mid-heavy murk that the band wear like a badge.
When it works, the rawness is the charm. “The Gathering” is the highlight, warm and earthy and left dynamic rather than crushed, the instruments allowed to breathe in a way a lot of modern heaviness forgets, and “How Deep Is the Rabbit Hole?” rides its fuzzed, driving bass into a genuine groove. There is a ritual streak here too: “Psychomagic” drops the guitars entirely for a dry, reverb-soaked ambient interlude, a nice bit of breathing room that shows the band think beyond the riff.
What you make of the rest depends on your tolerance for mud. The low mids are perpetually overloaded, the fuzz bass booms without much definition, and on tracks like “Power of Magic” and “Wizardkind” the guitars wash into a single undifferentiated haze where a little cleanup would let the riffs land. Some of that is the garage aesthetic doing its job. Some of it is just murk, and across nine tracks it can blur the songs into one another.
Taken on its own lo-fi terms, though, Magic is a likeable, characterful slab of garage stoner-doom from a band with real groove and a bit of mischief in them. For anyone who likes their fuzz unfiltered and their doom a little feral, it is an easy one to fall for. Just do not come looking for polish. That was never the point.
Magic is raw, garage-grade stoner-doom with heavy-psych and noise edges, recorded for a warm, unpolished live feel that mostly avoids loudness-war crushing, so the dynamics breathe. A growling fuzz bass drives the record. “The Gathering” is the best-sounding track, earthy and dynamic, and “How Deep Is the Rabbit Hole?” rides a strong fuzzed groove. “Psychomagic” breaks the pattern as a dry, reverb-heavy ambient interlude with no distorted guitar or bass. The recurring limitation is the perpetually overloaded low mids: the fuzz bass booms without definition and on the heavier tracks (Power of Magic, Wizardkind) the guitars wash into a single murky haze. Part garage charm, part genuine mud.
Standout tracks: The Gathering, How Deep Is the Rabbit Hole?
