Band:	Hail Spirit Noir
Album:	Oi Magoi
Style:	Blackened progressive metal, Psychedelic rock
Release date:	January 2014

01. Blood Guru
02. Demon For A Day
03. Satan Is Time
04. Satyriko Orgio (Satyrs' Orgy)
05. The Mermaid
06. Hunters
07. Oi Magoi

These days it can tend to be rare to come across bands that are both entirely original while also not too far out there with their quirkiness, and that combine the best of both the familiar and the unconventional. Greece's Hail Spirit Noir already added to the list of such bands with their 2012 effort Pneuma, easily one of the best debuts of the year. With Oi Magoi they now stand poised to take their sound in a perhaps more sophisticated direction.

Oi Magoi is, one the whole, a great follow up to Hail Spirit Noir's debut, retaining many of the qualities of Pneuma while also testing some new ingredients. Everything from the debut that won listeners over is more or less retained: the distinct xylophone/keyboard usage ("The Mermaid," "Blood Guru"), catchy chorus lines ("Demon For A Day"), beautiful clean vocals ("Satan Is Time," "The Mermaid"), as well as some harsher black metal moments ("Blood Guru," "Satyriko Orgio").

Unlike Pneuma, however, Oi Magoi embraces Hail Spirit Noir's progressive personality a lot more, and seems to be far more oriented towards improvisation and periods of extended instrumentation. In a sense this makes the music feel more sophisticated, or "complete" in a sense, as though some of the songwriting features from the band's debut have now matured. On the other hand, it also gives the music a more serious vibe that lacks some of the more lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek playfullness of the debut. Whether or not fans like this shift will, as usual, be a matter of personal preference, but it's likely most on display on "The Mermaid," essentially an 11 minute jam session, which in many ways takes the band's proggy persona to even greater heights than the climactic "Into The Gates Of Time" from Pneuma.

Is Oi Magoi a better release than Pneuma? It's quite difficult to say, as at many points it doesn't really seem better or worse, necessarily, simply different. And although this reviewer does prefer the goofiness of Hail Spirit Noir's debut to some of the more serious technicalities of this follow up, I can't deny that with Oi Magoi, they still manage to nail that peculiar blend of the trippy and the creepy that made the debut so damn good. Here that blend simply seems a bit more... restrained, perhaps, or rather as though it's shifted the way in which it's delivered slightly. But I'll be damned if that doesn't mean Hail Spirit Noir can't still bring home the goods and craft a complex, thoroughly stimulating release, for Oi Magoi is certainly that.