There was a worrying air of finality about Magma’s last album. Released in 2019, Zëss was an apocalyptic vision rescued from the vaults, the belated fulfilment of an abandoned project that dated back to the late 70s. The timing seemed very apt. Fifty years since they first formed in Paris, Magma appeared to be tidying up loose ends for one end-of-days blow-out. Leader Christian Vander even suggested as much in the translated lyrics: ‘We are here, we are ready in this ancient stadium/We have come for the last gathering’.
Thankfully though, and true to a band who’ve made a career by defying expectations and assumptions, Magma weren’t done. Having marked their anniversary by performing at the Philharmonie de Paris that summer, they decided to shake things up. “We started looking for a new line-up,” explains singer and longtime member Stella Vander Linon, Christian’s ex-wife. “We had problems,only musical problems, so we started to think about who could be in the band. We’d been together for too long and everyone was tired of each other. For me, it wasn’t a band anymore.”
