Description
Gazing at Medusa is an album by the American thrash/progressive metal band Tourniquet, independently released on the band’s own label Pathogenic Records in October 2018.
Tourniquet has been around since 1989, led by mastermind Ted Kirkpatrick. Ted is a drummer, and one of the best in the business, but he’s also a devotee of classical music, and he brings that sensibility to everything his band does. Gazing at Medusa is the tenth Tourniquet album, and the band has been through at least as many changes. They started out playing speed-thrash with Beethoven licks thrown in, and their first three albums are largely considered their best. The arrival of singer Luke Easter in 1994 heralded an era of slower, more groove-driven material, which is reductive at best – Tourniquet has never been an easy band to box in.
Easter left the band after 2012’s terrific Antiseptic Bloodbath, and with 2014’s Onward to Freedom being more of a various artists collection, Medusa is the debut of the new Tourniquet. Their new singer is Tim “Ripper” Owens, famous for taking Rob Halford’s place in Judas Priest for a few years. (If you’ve seen that movie Rock Star with Mark Wahlberg, that’s about Owens.) Whatever else you can say about him, he’s a hell of a singer, and he attacks this material the way he attacks everything.
Kirkpatrick and longtime guitarist Aaron Guerra handle the music, with early Megadeth star Chris Poland on lead guitar solos. The result is classic Tourniquet, big and thrashy and complicated, with layered guitars and tricky passages galore. «Sinister Scherzo» is everything there is to love about modern Tourniquet, including a lengthy Poland solo. «Memento Mori» does kill the momentum a little bit – it’s reminiscent of «Officium Defunctorum», from Psychosurgery – but they kick it back into gear with the great «All Good Things Died Here», and never slow it down again.
The lyrics are more straightforward than Tourniquet sometimes is – they tend to couch their spiritual themes in medical metaphors, but in this case they just say what’s on their minds. «The Peaceful Beauty of Brutal Justice», for instance, begins with a family sitting in court alongside the man who killed their daughter, and Owens just flat-out asks the question: “Where is justice in this world?” The song (which is terrific) is about how the wicked will be sent into damnation, and it makes room for, of all things, a flute melody in the middle.
For eight of these nine songs, Tourniquet sounds like a cohesive unit, (ahem) ripping through a set of songs that lives up to their legacy. The ninth is the title track, and this one features a different set of musicians for some reason, including Journey drummer Deen Castronovo on vocals, and it makes for a slightly awkward conclusion. But it’s a really good song, crashing in on half a dozen killer riffs one after the other, Kirkpatrick just tearing it up. Castronovo’s voice is more Dream Theater than Ripper’s, but it works on this song, and there’s enough energy and complexity that it still feels like Tourniquet.
I’m a longtime fan and even I didn’t expect Gazing at Medusa to be as tight, polished and strong as it is. Best of all, it just rocks – it’s great for jumping around the room like a madman. I’m all for diverse sounds in my metal – I love Soulfly and Holy Fawn and Bell Witch and Deliverance’s Bowie years – but there’s something to be said for a rip-snorting record like this one that wastes no time and just pummels you. I’d have loved this at 14, and I love it now. [Andre Salles, Tuesday Morning 3 a.m., November 6, 2018]
> iTunes (https://music.apple.com/us/album/gazing-at-medusa/1438684250)
CD tracklist:
01. Sinister Scherzo – 5:50
02. Longing for Gondwanaland – 5:46
03. Memento Mori – 4:22
04. All Good Things Died Here – 4:52
05. The Crushing Weight of Eternity – 6:17
06. The Peaceful Beauty of Brutal Justice – 5:06
07. Can’t Make Me Hate You – 4:02
08. One Foot in Forever – 4:59
09. Gazing at Medusa – 4:12
Note: Available at Bandcamp: https://tourniquet.bandcamp.com/album/gazing-at-medusa
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