MEDUSA: EN VIVO EN BUENOS AIRES

I learn that this band is a notable Peruvian Prog-Folk group with six studio albums since 2005; when I received the CD/DVD to be reviewed (elsewhere), I thought FLOR DE LOTO to be a relatively new hard rock act from Argentina, as I tried to read the texts in Spanish... Medusa offers a 71-minute concert from Buenos Aires, dating from November 2014.

The music heard here is mainly hard rock with some slight folk nuances and even slighter prog elements. I'm not much into hard rock myself, so the whole set sounds pretty much the same from start to end into my ears. The song-oriented compositions are averagely rather fast and heavy with the usual wall of electric guitar. There's also a female [background] vocalist on stage, but her role is amazingly minimal. Even in the one and only track ('Desapareciendo') to feature her "voz principal", the totally unspectacular voice of frontman Alonso Herrera pushes forward.

The sonic quality is quite good while the visual side of the DVD is somewhat modest, concerning both the lights and other stage settings and the camera work. The six bonus videos feature the same songs, either as regular, amateurish gig clips or being more or less ruined by clumsy editing with colour and mirror image effects. I bet the studio albums reveal the band's progressive and folk music leanings much better. The flutes and charango guitar played by one member are colouring the sound very nicely here and there while the songs themselves are basically all too commonplace Western hard rock. 2½ stars rounded up for good digipak design.