Ex-Arch Enemy singer Alissa White-Gluz’s new band Blue Medusa made their surprise live debut at a German club show on Friday (September 4).
The five-piece, who emerged in March, played four songs at the Huxleys Neue Welt concert hall in Berlin: the originals Flying Monkey, Crocodile and Checkmate, plus a cover of White-Gluz and ex-Alice Cooper guitarist Nita Strauss’ 2023 collaborative single The Wolf You Feed.
The gig, put on by local record label Corrupted Blood Records, also featured sets from Kreator and Heaven Shall Burn, with each performance being live-streamed on Twitch. Watch the Blue Medusa show below.
Corrupted Blood made multiple announcements over the course of the concert, including their own festival for summer 2027, Corrupted Blood Open Air, with a 10,000-person capacity. They also revealed an exclusive merch drop in collaboration with Kreator. Items are available to buy now via the Corrupted Blood website.
Blue Medusa – rounded out by guitarists Alyssa Day and Dani Sophia, drummer Delaney Jaster and bassist Alicia Vigil – are one of a number of projects to which White-Gluz has dedicated herself following her Arch Enemy exit. She ended her 11-year tenure in the international melodeath firebrands on November 23, later explaining that she couldn’t treat music “like just another day at the office”.
On the same day, she released her debut solo single, The Room Where She Died. She launched Blue Medusa on International Women’s Day, March 8. Marketing materials said that fans “can expect the same signature ferocity, theatrical energy and vocal firepower that have defined White-Gluz’s career, now unleashed in a fresh, expansive and electrifying setting”. Checkmate, their first single, followed on March 20.
Blue Medusa dropped their latest song, Crocodile, on September 4, the same day as the Corrupted Blood show. White-Gluz said the thrashy track “is about that feeling that you’re being watched... that instinctive dread when you know something dangerous is nearby, even though you can’t see it”.
“It’s the feeling that something is lurking just beneath the surface of what appears to be safe or familiar,” she added. “That tension between what you perceive and what you sense; that is where the song lives.”
As well as starting her solo career and forming Blue Medusa, White-Gluz announced in May that she’d joined UK power metal beloveds Dragonforce as co-lead singer, alongside continuing frontman Marc Hudson. She previously collaborated with the band on an alternative version of their 2024 single Burning Heart, from the album Warp Speed Warriors.
Dragonforce have yet to release further music with White-Gluz but they’re gearing up for a tour celebrating 20 years of their breakthrough 2006 album Inhuman Rampage. See dates and get tickets via their website.
