Blue Medusa (feat. Alissa White-Gluz)

Written by Alissa White-Gluz, Alyssa Day, Dani Sophia and Adam Bentley.
Lyrics written by Alissa White-Gluz.
Produced by Alissa White-Gluz and Kile Odell.
Mixed and Mastered by Kile Odell

“Just to be clear, the deal I signed in 2016 was for a solo album and Blue Medusa is something else – it’s a band,” she explained in an exclusive interview with Metal Hammer.

“The solo project – Alissa – my goal with that is to give back to all the people I have collaborated with over the years. I’ve done something like over 50 collaborations over the years, so many! So for a long time it was like, ‘Man, I am appearing on a lot of people’s albums. What if they appeared on my album?’"

During the interview, Alissa also explains that the solo project will be more diverse, while Blue Medusa is reflective of her "top preferences" in music, citing "high-energy, fast heavy music", black metal and progressive metal as specific influences. She also shares a dream collaborator for her solo project.

"There’s also people that I just absolutely love who are a huge inspiration to me who I would really, really want to create with - like Brody Dalle of The Distillers," she enthuses. "I can’t go and create a whole band with all of these people – much as I’d like to – so the solo project remains a place where I want to have the freedom to do whatever feels good. My music taste is not narrow; I like a lot of different things. Black metal, Queen, Muse… I want to be able to be eclectic with it."

You announced plans for a solo album in 2016. What, ultimately, pushed you to go this route and go completely solo? How long have you been thinking about it?

Alissa: I'm kind of a workaholic. I've always been trying to fill time. Not that there's a lot of spare time: there's almost none. I've been doing so many collaborations and guest appearances, all over, everywhere, for everyone else's albums. A friend of mine put together a playlist for me of every release that I've done, and I don't think it's complete. I think we missed a few things, but it came to 15 hours of music. Then I realized, 'I don't have any of it to my name.' I was like, 'Holy shit! That's 23 years of grinding myself into the ground.' I'm super proud of everything I've made, but none of it is truly my own. I guess I was thinking about it for a while, but it wasn't eating at me. It was, 'That would be cool, that would be fun.' With every collaboration, I would think, 'Oh, it would be cool to bring them onto my stuff.' It got to a point where it was, 'Life's short. I got to do it at some point.'

Is there an autonomy aspect here as well? As in, now you get to control everything.

Alissa: No, I don't feel the need to control every aspect. I fully want people — if someone is better than me at something, they should do it. I don't need that. I have a great team, so I have delegated, so it's not me controlling everything, but I think, in terms of expressing through music and art, it's cool not to have to fit into a box in any way and not have to remain tethered to expectations. One of my favorite artists is Devin Townsend. I love how he kept reinventing himself and just doing whatever he wanted, basically, just creating a world where a lot of his albums sound very different. But I, personally, really like all of them because I think they are all super creative. I was always inspired by that.