Magna Rose

On The Rocks, Bournemouth

Magna Rose are a five piece band from Dorset featuring Amy Dytham(Vocals) along with her brother Alex (Guitar), Jon Grove (Guitar), Gavin Coles (Bass) and they have been joined briefly by top local drummer from Bad Magic/Colt 45 (Amongst Others) Andy Smooth. They have been together since 2011 and have played a fair amount of gigs at locals venues and festivals.

After a short hiatus they return to play their first gig in a while here at On The Rocks. Contrary to popular belief I don’t review every gig I go to……just most of them!! This particular one I popped along to on a Wednesday night after finishing hosting the local “Live Wire Live” radio show at 9pm. The reason for my curiosity of “Magna Rose”, was that I have seen them a few times before at local festivals and liked what I heard but there was nothing really dragging me back to see them again, however after seeing the news online that they had gone through a line up change and revamp, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. The band hit the stage around 9:30pm to a fairly packed house for a wet Wednesday evening and proceeded to rock everyone’s socks off. Amy is full of youthful confidence doing everything expected of her, the vocals are powerful and well delivered ably backed with what seems like a talented well rehearsed band.

Magna Rose 1–2

The set is a mixture of well chosen crowd pleasing covers and some exciting original tunes from their debut album “Saddle Up” that are full of potential, songs like “Those Who Live To Rock” and “Woe Is Me” which all really hit the mark. The band’s style can be simply described as a fusion hard rock with a hint of blues, nothing really like any of the locals bands performing at the moment. They have a great asset in their guitarist Jon Grove who effortlessly delivers some really great sounding guitar rifts that hugely add to the band’s appeal. Andy Smooth gets the chance to take the spotlight with a 10 minute drum solo with Andy using every piece of the drum kit to make a huge exciting finale ending with his head energetically hitting the cymbals. The band return for two final numbers and get a very enthusiastic amount of appreciation from the very well entertained audience, I’m sure by the look of this performance tonight we will be seeing a lot more of Magna Rose in the months to come, it was a very pleasant surprise to see an average band go away to reinvent themselves coming back firing on all cylinders like this.

Set-List
Intro
Communication Breakdown
I’m Not Dead
Fat Bottomed Girls(Queen)
Woe Is Me
Hysteria
Best Of You(Foo Fighters)
No Tomorrow
Those Who Love To Rock
Drum solo
All In The Name Of Pity
Fithy

Video