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...

Toto sings love songs of little distinction or consequence, offering greeting-card verse and aural bouquets to fantasy lovers via the medium of cutting-edge studio technology and their own well-honed sessionman "chops." The group's cleverly titled new album, Toto IV, follows this formula to a T, mixing sodden ballads taken at tiptoeing-rhino tempos with booming, echoey rock songs.

Toto builds...

Toto is the kind of dull debut you'd expect from a bunch of career session players—which is really disappointing, because the musicians involved are unusually fine. David Paich, Jeff Porcaro and David Hungate have been sensational in backing Boz Scaggs, Dirk Hamilton, et al., on record, but Toto lacks at least two elements crucial to good rock: a singer and a writer. Three group members sing...