MAGOR, Túl Mindenen  (2008, demo)

The skull:
This poor skull! All manner of junk is going into his boney being, for a reason we will likely never know. Túl Mindenen means “beyond all” in Hungarian, and the torture this skull is enduring here is truly beyond all reasonability. Some big ol’ stubby cylindrical thing has been jammed into the top of his head while various tubes run in and out of both sides of the skull. He’s chained in four spots, like he’s gonna get drawn and quartered, and to add insult to injury his forehead’s been stamped with a barcode. Wisps of smoke or some gaseous stuff trails from the tubes on the right. He silently screams “I’m not an animal, I’m a…skull!!!” There’s just no dignity in what’s happening here.

The music:
Lately I’ve been real hard on newer bands here at BDS, but admit something: if you’re a modern band putting a skull on your cover and playing fifth-generation tough-guy metal, you have no reason to exist. Hungary’s Magor are another band that toss together one-dimensional riffs and terrible yelled vocals and call it metal. But they do have some distinctive elements that make them a bit more enjoyable than the bland norm. One thing Magor does is throw in sublime lead guitar lines and thematic passages, as heard near the end of this demo’s third and final song, “Rejts el Magadban.” More of that and less of almost everything else would be cool. I appreciate the tightness displayed in “Arccal a Feny Fele,” so credit drummer Zoltan Csatai on that, and the doom-ish element within “Túlélő Vagyok, Nem Aldozat” keeps things interesting, so that’s appreciated. Still, Magor will likely sound pointless to any seasoned metalhead. But if you just got turned onto Sepultura, Metallica and Pantera yesterday, and you live in Hungary, you’re gonna love this.
— Friar Wagner