Coming to you on 180gm vinyl in a “black velvet album jacket shaved from a centaur’s scrotum” – a presumably unprecedented selling point – First Step Beyond represents the entire output of Chicago no-marks Medusa, recorded on a four-track machine in 1975 and left until now to accumulate moss and mystique. Medusa’s whole shtick was that they were godless, irredeemable pentagram frequenters – but you just want to hug them. Opening track Strangulation, for example, signally fails to strike fear into the hearts of men with its adorably weedy vocals and a drum track so carefully ploppy that it might as well have been gingerly carried to a bin in a nappy, but somehow you can’t help loving it. The tritone riff of Unknown Fear more successfully conveys a certain Amicus portmanteau frisson – “feel the icy chill run down your spine”, woah – but again, you get the impression that the extent of Medusa’s saturnalia was that one of them may have owned a Dennis Wheatley paperback, then felt compelled to make a cape out of his mum’s towelling dressing gown. Meanwhile, Temptress apes the amdram moodiness of early Deep Purple – a suspicion heightened by Black Wizard, featuring a distinct paraphrase of the Child In Time riff. Inessential, but enormously charming. Review by "Gorgon Bennett" (http://recordcollectormag.com).
RATING: 7.75 / 10
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RATING: 7.75 / 10
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