Medusa - TRAPEZE***

Black Cloud/Jury/Your Love Is Alright/Touch My Life/Seafull/Makes You Wanna Cry/Medusa

Medusa was the follow up album from the British hard rock trio Trapeze. The individual members would later in the decade join some of the most commercially successful groups featuring this genre.

“An improvement over their debut, this one is guitar driven heavy metal style hard rock with a few semi-commercial rock cuts in the mix. It's consistently very good.”

“Medusa is quite different from eponymous which was full of psychedelic flowery songs. Here the band try to rock harder throwing glances in the direction of Led Zeppelin, but their harmonies are more progressive.”

“Awesome English power trio featuring future members of Deep Purple, Whitesnake and Judas Priest. Glenn Hughes vocals and bass-lines are awesome and the songs kick along nicely with a riff heavy groove that can't fail to get you head-banging along.”

“I've heard this album a number of times and there just isn't much in the way of hooks. Makes You Wanna Cry has a decent vocal refrain, and there are a couple of OK guitar licks here and there. Medusa and Jury attempt to conjure a darkness that the by-the-numbers writing and instrumental parts just can't support. The vocals are pretty middle of the road for this type of music and there's little in the way of impressive musicianship.”

“The slow tempos and complete lack of sonic energy just kill this. More evidence that power trios just don’t work. The bass here is extremely poor in content and volume. Don’t expect proper chord progressions or anything as complicated as a middle eight, as the singer hangs in limbo improvising a stereotypical vocal lines over a murky riffs that monotonously underpin entire songs without any real chords to work against. There is one hot track, Makes You Wanna Cry that could have been worked up into something really good.”

“This is one of the best hard rock albums of the early seventies. Most people who were around in those days equate this album with the very best rock of the era. Only a tin ear can compare this with the much later, less interesting and somewhat formulaic Judas Priest or Whitesnake.”