Like this group's Wizard of Oz namesake, Hydra is a hapless little dog, memorable only for some directionless whimpering. But it's not surprising that these Los Angeles session players have run out of ideas so early in the game. Their debut album, last year's financially remunerative Toto, was no more than a sweet and slippery example of late-Seventies lounge rock, steeped in the mundane musicianship, shrill singing and contrived velocity of semitalents like Pablo Cruise and the Little River Band. Though such high-pitched pop songs as "I'll Supply the Love," "Girl Goodbye" and "Hold the Line" showed a canny commercial sense, they blended in all too easily with the pervasive AM pop-rock-disco drone.

Now Toto is attempting to broaden its scope by larding a thoroughly thin sound with grandiose arrangements and synthesizer dross redolent of Styx, et al., then lashing the whole rehash to a silly fantasy theme about a bold swordsman, a damsel and a dragon lord. That Hydra is an unlistenable mess would be neither here nor there were it not for the credentials of some of Toto's musicians. Leader Jeff Porcaro is a fine drummer, and keyboardist-songwriter David Paich cowrote Silk Degrees with Boz Scaggs. Here, however, they demonstrate not the faintest glimmer of a driving, creative spark. The music is annoyingly lightweight and derivative, while the vocals–to put it mildly–are abysmal.

Toto may continue to thrive in the rock-starved Top Forty, but these guys have absolutely nothing new to say as they bounce from one syrupy subgenre to another. Sample lyrics:

You crucify an orphan

With the rainbow in your eyes

Then you send out invitations

And address them with his cries.

Though a defensive Porcaro has told interviewers that "craft is content," there's no evidence on Hydra to verify this insipid thesis. Indeed, the band can't even match the calculated precision of, say, the Stanky Brown Group. And when it attempts to approximate the sappy integrity of all those cosmically corny rockers now in vogue, Toto–like Dorothy's little pooch–is a long way from, uh, Kansas. (RS 310)

TIMOTHY WHITE