Metal comes from far and wide and even in Aussie towns like Bunbury where the metal community is small, it’s also passionate and occassionally breeds some quality music. Medusa’s Gaze are one such act who are looking to break the shackles of regional W.A. and get the metal train rolling through to the world and their way out is the debut album “Rise Of The Gorgon”.
It’s difficult to really pigeonhole Medusa’s Gaze style without using the term “progressive metal”. While there’s a lot of changeups in tempo and chord structures as well as a mix of melody, clean vocals and gutteral booming riffs, it’s not the tradditional progressive style that you would normally come across. Taking influences from death metal, thrash and groove metal, the debut album is definitely a challenging album in all respects but listenable and engaging at the same time. The first couple of tracks are definitely geared towards a more groove train of thought, “Taken From Life” and “Disappear” switch it up a little here and there but keep it rather concise in it’s heavy manner. Where things start to ramp up a bit is on the third track “The Valley” where the more prog elements start to seap in, blending melodic passages and heavier brutality that contains a lot of dynamics and tempo changes.
The band bring it back a little with “To Ashes We Burn” where there is a slight old school feel about it, again the track goes in different directions but there’s a familiarity to it which also makes it one of the more fun tracks to listen to. While mellower moments do appear sporadically in most of the songs on offer, it’s “Veneer Reality” that takes it further by doing away with most of the hit-you-in-the-face type stuff and takes it down a few notches to give some breathing space on the album. It’s a welcome change for sure but I wouldn’t say it’s a standout track although the last part of the song certainly brings in some action to keep things moving.
Back to the heavier stuff, the album veers off into fashionable journeys, the epic title track has a blazing solo to kick the song off while the lengthy “Eternal Rage” epitomises the prog element that the band try to go for on this album. The closer “Ravenous Mind” is ferocious stuff, switchups and swinging riffage abound here as if the band were trying to cram as much music into one song as possible. It’s certainly a great way to end things and speaks volumes on what a band from Bunbury can really achieve with a bit of talent and hard work involved.
TRACKLIST
Taken From Life
Disappear
The Valley
To Ashes We Burn
Veneer Reality
Beyond The Gallows
The Darkness Of Hell
Eternal Rage
Ravenous Mind
