out now: White Magician -- triple-time travelling U.S. vintage heavy metal obsessed with Mercyful Fate's obsession with Blue Öyster Cult

If White Magician were a bus, it would be a bus that makes its first stop in 2020, and that's where you and I get on the bus, and then the bus goes directly to 1980, when the young bands are making heavy rock faster, adding a lot more shredding, increasing the energy (when people called it high-energy rock!) and making the music more headbanging. After that stop, the White Magician bus goes to the final stop at the bus depot in the 1970s, and this is where spirit of the songwriting comes home. The 1980s are looking great, looking awesome, but White Magician is just at the beginning of the new decade and does not jump with two feet into the 1980s. White Magician is more comfortable playing uptempo, rocking, progressive heavy metal that is based on the 1970s as the foundational inspiration, as if to say, the 1980s would have been cool if they had existed, but the 1970s did exist for real, and that's what White Magician lives. Below you will read that the official propaganda says that White Magician is like Mercyful Fate and Blue Öyster Cult. Well, this time the propaganda is true. It does sound like Mercyful Fate covering Blue Öyster Cult, like the guitar player and the drummer love Mercyful Fate a whole lot, but the singer's true passion is Blue Öyster Cult and 1970s heavy rock in general. When the band realized that they are not all on the same page, and that they are kind of pulling in two different directions, with some members looking back to the 1970s and other members looking towards the 1980s, they must have thought that they needed to break up because this is just too much, it's too retro, too double retro, if you will. Ah, but then the bass player said something really strange: "What if we just sit down and eat lots of pizza and french fries, play a couple of bowling games, and think about combining the two sounds while we stuff our faces?!" The guitar player and drummer thought that it was crazy but then they realized that it was difficult enough to find dudes (not in their 50s and 60s) in Michigan that like the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, and they thought that they better consider the idea. The guitar player just had one more question: "Yes, my dudes, but, like, can I still shred like Mercyful Fate on "A Corpse without Soul"? Everyone looked at each other, with a bowling hand in one hand and a pizza slice on the other, and the singer said, "Oh, yeah, my dude, you sure can! Go for it! We'll make it work because with bowling and pizza, we can all be brothers forever!!"

So, anyway, that's exactly happened. Exactly like that. --Metal Bulletin Zine

White Magician

Dealers of Divinity

Cruz Del Sur Music

20 November 2020

Cruz Del Sur Music's official propaganda: Classic, mystical metal with a high dosage of ’70s rock influences and unparalleled guitar work! On their first LP, Dealers of Divinity, Detroit, Michigan’s White Magician seamlessly blend the magic(k) of Blue Öyster Cult with the spellbinding glory of Mercyful Fate! The title for White Magician’s first full-length, Dealers of Divinity, depicts three blind card dealers who are employed by an entity who controls the universe’s behind-the-scenes gaming facility. The dealers laugh at the earth’s inhabitants’ belief that they are free. They watch them line up and play at this game called “life” and grasp at the illusion that they can actually win. But, ultimately, it is an artifice of the highest degree. Their fate has already been determined by the dealers well before the game starts. It begs the ultimate question: Do we accept this destiny or will we fight to make our own?

This theme is the backdrop of White Magician’s mystical blend of classic metal and ’70s rock on Dealers of Divinity; a challenging array of stellar guitar work and oftentimes labyrinthine song arrangements that stretch well beyond traditional boundaries. Originally formed in 2010, White Magician — featuring guitarist/vocalist The Great Kaiser, guitarist Mars Mysterio, bassist Mofang Tengrand and drummer Master Commandriani — has gradually honed their sound across three releases preceding Dealers of Divinity: 2016’s The Pledge EP; 2017’s Antipathy single, and 2018’s split with The Great Kaiser’s White Magician (not to be confused with this White Magician) and Prelude to Ruin. Through trial and error and a laborious songwriting process that is oftentimes born out of a single riff, White Magician eventually arrived at a sound that relies on imaginative storytelling and some of the most advanced guitar interplays heard in classic metal in recent memory. Recorded over many nights and weekends between May 2018 and December 2019 in Lansing, Michigan by George “The Extortionist” Szegedy, Dealers Of Divinity does not lack substance and drama. The album’s seven songs benefit from not only The Great Kaiser’s smooth vocal delivery but a regular influx of twin guitar melodies, classical guitar arrangements and technical guitar motifs, all immersed in songs that are often a journey onto themselves. Arcane and ambitious, Dealers of Divinity is an extravagance of magic and power sure to captivate any classic metal fan!

Dealers of Divinity by White Magician