eMusic Review
Several notable prog-era groups utilized choirs and orchestral instruments — but none made music that sounded anything like this. Formed in Paris in 1969 and fronted by visionary drummer Christian Vander, Magma took the progressive ideal of infusing rock with the classical sensibility to unlikely extremes. Horns, xylophones, piano and a small but often rowdy choir augment the post-psych rock sound, but it's the cyclical format, with motifs recurring opera-style, that lends this 1973 set its pseudo-classical status. Epic in the right sense of the word, Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh is at once heavy and Wagnerian and as fashionably loopy as Burt Bacharach's score for Lost Horizon, released that same year. The subject matter — hippie types flee Earth for the planet Kobaia — was no less preposterous. But you'll not glean that from the lyrics, which are sung in Vander's bespoke Kobaian. Unlike most prog, there is little emphasis on individual virtuosity, though as befits the commune-dwelling combo, it was the whole rather than the parts that mattered. And how!
