Mydra-Mydra

Yesterrock
2012



Mydra was one of many German melodic hard rock bands to come out of the later half of the eighties. As the story goes the band emerged out of the ashes of another Hamburg band called Charon. After two albums under that name Charon’s line-up changed so much that a new name was in order. Or at least Phonogram Records thought as much so after the names Midas Touch and Hydra were rejected by the label the band settled in on Myra. The rest as they say is history. Recorded between 1987 and 1988 the album was released only to promptly go out of print. If I'm not mistaken this album was already reissued in 2005. While Charon played fairly straight forward heavy metal with the name change there also came a change in style. Mydra's style ends up everywhere from pomp rock/AOR ("I've Got The Power") to sleazy hard rock ("Freeway Blues") to pop metal ("Love Killer") and back to AOR ("Light Up The Sky"). "Fireball" is keyboard-driven hard rock as is "She's No Lover". Speaking of keyboards this album relies a tad too much on them for my tastes. That said when it's done right like on the excellent "Double Dealer" then the keyboard/guitar ratio works wonders. Now for an album that was originally released in 1988 "Mydra" shows surprisingly minimum wear and tear. It does lapse into that familiar eighties feeling every now and then, but overall it is a nice collection of varied AOR/hard rock/melodic metal. Yesterrock's version contains the bonus track "You're The Only One". Again it falls somewhere between AOR and softer hard rock. Mydra from all accounts does have a sizable following so this re-issue should be well received.