From Doom to Dio

It was odd when Magic Circle debuted. A group of heavy-hitters from the largely straight-edge Boston hardcore scene playing stoner/doom metal that was awash in pot smoke, sludgy riffs, and psychedelic imagery. What was even more shocking was the barking hardcore vocals of Rival Mob frontman Brendan Radigan transformed into earnest, soaring melodies that approached the emotional heights (or depths) of anything rendered by Ozzy-era Black Sabbath. But even more shocking is Magic Circle’s second full-length Journey Blind, which follows the trajectory of the band they are a paean to (Black Sabbath), past the cough-syrup grooves of “Sweet Leaf” and Crowley-esque occultism of “Electric Wizard” into the unjustly maligned later Ozzy years of Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die and even the grandeur and melodrama of the justly lauded Dio years (especially the classic Mob Rules).

Don’t be thrown by the warbling mellotron which opens the title track. The lyrics about horsemen and the Tolkein-esque title (“Journey Blind”) locate this album more properly in the Dio years. And they do more than a credible job. Magic Circle have proven that they can summon the power and dread of early Sabbath, improve upon the transitional late Ozzy-years (wherein Ozzy’s alcoholism and drug abuse got the best of the band’s attempt to segue into the 80’s less doomy metal realm), and make a compelling argument via imitation that Mob Rules belongs at the top of the Sabbath pantheon, rather than as a surprising afterthought.

The band isn’t interested in limiting itself to the framework set by their most obvious touchstone, however. The plodding march of “A Ballad for the Vultures” plays with some of the themes and vocal stylings of Dio, but the morose riff is more at home in the world of Sabbath’s early period. They blend doom and Dio flawlessly and in the process create a document of the shifting sands of metal history and prove that bongs and shrooms always belonged on the shelf beneath dragon posters, despite their straight-edge origins and the macho expectations of hardcore. With Journey Blind, Magic Circle bring the sincerity of hardcore to the entirety of the first 30 years of metal and in the process, distinguish themselves as an indispensable voice in the contemporary realm of the genre.