MAESTROWORKS

Bringing a hard-rock swagger and the majesty of metal to their own brand of prog rock, Magic Pie break a six-year studio silence with Maestro. Frontman Eiríkur Hauksson tells Prog about being a metalhead in a prog world, writing songs at bus stops, and feeling the heat on Cruise To The Edge.

- David West

Writer's block – is there any condition more dreadful to a creative soul? The very anathema of the muses that bestow inspiration, that fearsome struggle to bring art into the world plays a key role in Maestro, the new album from Norway's Magic Pie. The record is bookended by the two-part Opus Imperfectus, the story of a composer struggling to find the perfect ending to complete their masterpiece. The subject seems apposite when Magic Pie's fans endured a six-year dry spell between 2019's Fragments Of The 5th Element and the arrival of Maestro.

“This was far too long,” says Icelandic-born frontman Eiríkur Hauksson. “That was never intended. I think it started with Covid. Many bands used that period to go into the studio and work on stuff. Hail to them. We somehow just fell apart.”

It wasn't quite as bad as all that. Certainly, changes were afoot, with drummer Martin Utby joining the fold while guitarist Kim Stenberg set about composing the music, leaving the lyrics in Hauksson's hands.

“Usually he has the main line of the chorus and he says, ‘I just can’t get it out of my head. This line has to be the punchline, can you please write around it,’ and I do that,” says Hauksson. “This time, Maestro, the title of the album, was my idea. This crazy composer who can’t find his last chord, it’s all mine.”

In Opus Imperfectus, Hauksson imagines a composer commissioned to write a symphony in celebration of his country's reigning monarchs, but he can't get over the finish line.

“I decided immediately, this guy does this masterpiece, he’s not happy with the ending, but he has to give it away because the king and queen have a deadline for a concert on December 4,” he explains.

The tale is told from the perspective of the composer's young assistant, watching his master grapple with the symphony that he can't finish, but Hauksson wanted the ending of Opus Imperfectus to be ambivalent about the hapless Maestro's final fate.