Hydromedusa so metal, they make Ozzy Osborne finally shit out that bat’s head that he swallowed 20 years ago! OOOOOHHHHH! Hydromedusa so metal, Lars Ulrich started his campaign against file sharing again just to spite them out of any cash they might earn! HEEEEEEEEEYYYOOOO! Hydromedusa so metal, Mike Myers decided to digitally remove Alice Cooper’s scene from ‘Wayne’s World’ and replace him with Hydromedusa! BOOOOOOOM!
I can keep doing these all fucking day man, honestly, it’s a non-issue. As long, as I’ve got Hydromedusa in my life, and their sludgy riffs are slushing around in mostly-empty cavern of a skull, then I’ll be dimwittedly repurposing Yo Mama jokes with metal references. Hydromedusa are sick, and attempting to get #Hydromedusasometal trending on the blogosphere is the least I could do. Actually, the least I could do would be to immediately stop making jokes and write a few doggamn words about how good they are. So, I’ll probably do that, hey.
Take your mind back to when Black Sabbath and Motorhead were at their most debauched and demented. When a dozen lines of speed and a sacrifice to an Aztec demi-god was considered an acceptable substitute for the morning coffee? Well, take that manic pose, and strike it in the middle of Adelaide. The City of Churches is well known for pumping out its fair share of darker material (Wireheads, Rule of Thirds, Danny Whitten’s Veins), but Hydromedusa take it to a more eccentric and obvious level. They play like it’s their mission to overcome Kyuss’ legacy, and they’re not afraid to show it either. The riffs Hydromedusa play are peeled from the residue of a cone-piece, and tendrils of smoke linger with menace. They’re deadly, pungent, decadent, dripping in a slow-grinding fervour that makes the butterflies in my stomach begin to thrash and headbang with almost the same zeal as my own fucking cranium.
An album of simple, plunging riffs is something that can quickly turn into Deep Purple territory, but Hydromedusa are careful to tread that line with interjections where it appears like the Dark Lord himself is making an appearance in the recording studio. The thundering opening of “Company Man” is as close to riding out of the gates of Hell as we’ll come. The maelstrom of “Bells” sears the flesh with the same flame that wrought Sleep and High On Fire. And “Wintertime Blues” whips and cracks with an unrelenting fury, an impeding force of metallic churning and guitar solos alight with embers stoked from Satan’s own coffee machine.
Hydromedusa may ape their idols, but that’s okay, because they’re bringing the same ball-crunching, spleen-splitting, eye-gouging, tongue-wrenching, soul-consuming, body-engulfing spirit that made their heroes deliver such good music. They’re metal, in a traditional sense, and Australia can occasionally feel sparse in that regard. If ever the time calls for some boiling sludge that occasionally explodes into vitriolic gashes of metal that looks over its shoulder, reach no further than this Hydromedusa record.
Grab it from Hydromedusa’s Bandcamp here, available now through Tym Records.
