A vast improvement on Magoa’s first studio album, Topsy Turvydom starts very strongly with a beautifully ambient intro, but wastes no time showing you what the album is about.
Ailleurs is the opening track, a hard hitting almost structure-less chug that will get you swaying with it! Hands down it’s a great track to start the album with, but it’s not all clear sailing from there. In fact, the next two tracks are almost a blur; there seems to be a strong necessity to fill space rather than embrace it.
This is, however, until Betraying Grace kicks in. With its epic ground and pound, this track is structured well, filling the spaces cleverly and therefore making it a great single. Unfortunately, there are only a handful of tracks worth paying attention to, which can be named on one hand (Ailleurs, Betraying Grace, Party Time, and Broken Record). It’s hard to say Magoa are going to be making a huge impact with this album but it will blend in nicely.
The album ends strong by thrashing through the final track There Is No Tomorrow, which is one of the shortest tracks, allowing it to fade out with an elusive buzz.
Overall, it’s a pretty typical djent album and is perhaps a safe bet to have in your record collection if you enjoy this genre. It doesn’t break any new grounds but is listenable from start to finish, with a few nice surprises along the way.
6/10
