Sporting a beautifully painted cover of a pike jumping out of a lake reminiscent of their seminal "Tales From The Thousand Lakes" album, AMORPHIS' newest long player is an homage to their earliest years as a band. "Magic & Mayhem" is an album full of songs from the Finnish legends' first three full-length releases, but rerecorded with the current AMORPHIS lineup and with the - obviously - current production technology.

When bands revisit their past and recreate songs or albums from yesteryear, it usually winds up being just a cash grab, a slap in the face, or just a complete waste of everybody's time. SUICIDAL TENDENCIES embarrassed themselves when they redid their magnificent debut album, and while DIMMU BORGIR and EXODUS' re-recordings of their classic albums weren't half bad, the notion of going back and creating an album like this rather than hunkering down to create new music is always a dangerous decision when the fans are considered.

Luckily, the bulk of "Magic & Mayhem" recreates some old classics with a refreshing production and the current lineup retains the magic and charm of the oldies well in certain aspects. "Against Widows", "On Rich And Poor", My Kantele" and "Song Of The Troubled One" are done remarkably well, easily the standouts of the album along with seminal classic "Black Winter Day". However, aside from the latter, notice those songs are all from the epic "Elegy" record. The songs from that album are handled the best and while they aren't as great as the originals, they do offer a bold new take and they translate the best on "Magic & Mayhem".

The same cannot be said for the songs off of "Tales From The Early Years" and especially "The Karelian Isthmus", as those two albums sport such a raw, magical production that truly can never be recaptured. There's a certain haunting charm to both and even though the songs are sung and played virtually note-for-note, the new, clean production just doesn't harness the power of songs like "Exile Of The Sons", "The Castaway", "Vulgar Necrolatry" and "Drowned Maid". The new versions are nice and it's clearly AMORPHIS "covering" these songs, but they can't hold a candle to the originals. The lack of magic and haunting sound to the two earlier albums really hold this release back. Also, it would have been much better had AMORPHIS redone the acoustic reprise to "My Kantele", and the redone version of their terrible cover of "Light My Fire" should not have been included on this.

Overall, "Magic & Mayhem" is fun to listen to for a change of pace or to possibly pretend to be seeing AMORPHIS in concert since they hardly ever tour the States. But since these versions aren't anywhere near as great as the originals, fans of the band should just stick to popping in the original albums. "Magic & Mayhem" is fun, not mandatory.