TRACK REVIEW: Flying Monkey by Blue Medusa
It’s safe to say that Alissa White-Gluz has no intention to slow down or have any free time. Not only has she recently been announced as the new vocalist of Dragonforce, her own band Blue Medusa have recently released their second track Flying Monkey. So let's talk about it!
Flying Monkey starts with a very eerie acoustic guitar that is so unsettling and beautiful at the same time that you don’t know whether to be lulled into a false sense of security or to get ready for what is about to come. Immediately, you get blasted by the heavy distorted guitars of Alyssa and Dani to get your ears ready for the signature voice of White-Gluz. The verse kicks in with that pedal to the metal style that has been established thoroughly by the bands previously single “Checkmate”, non stop double kick and chugging style metal riff while Alissa screams you into submission.
The Pre chorus changes into mimicking the creepiness of the intro, with Alissa White-Gluz showing she can do everything somehow at the same time, with a three layered vocal of a whisper main melody, a falsetto harmony and a heavy vocal track in the background, which is such personal favourite to hear in this genre. This almost Tim Burton feeling section builds perfectly into another hard hitting chorus.
The chorus of Flying Monkey is proof that this band enjoys experimenting with sounds and how to get the feeling across correctly. Most other choruses of this genre, particularly sung by White-Gluz, do have a certain feeling of getting ready for war and leading an army. However this one, feels more like they are standing out and standing against what they were told to do, maybe it’s because a line in the chorus is “I won’t be another victim to your rat pack”, or if it’s how short the chorus is actually is, going against the grain of the standard “rules” of songwriting.
Something definitely worth of note is that on the line “enjoy your plummet”, White-Gluz sings almost like a cultish version of Kulning, which fits so perfectly into the theme and aesthetic of the music video. It all shows how well thought through everything about this song and video are.
Without giving you a chance to breathe after the chorus, the guitarists step forward and shred in a way that can only be described as “ridiculous” in the best way before diving back into another verse full of energy.
After the second chorus, you get a literal siren warning for what is about to come. You know a breakdown is coming. Stabs build up the tension culminating into a huge machine gun drum fill, a brief moment of silence, then boom! A huge drop into an insanely nasty breakdown involving devil like gutturals and another face melting solo section, this breakdown truly has everything!
Flying Monkey ends similar to how it starts, but more distorted and somehow even creepier, a truly fantastic song from beginning to end, I can’t wait for more from Blue Medusa.
Thank you for reading!
Review by Josh Fodden