Toto - Hydra

Hydra is the second studio album by American rock band Toto, originally released in October 1979 via Columbia Records.

Toto is an American rock band formed in 1977 in Los Angeles. Toto is known for a musical style that combines elements of pop, rock, soul, funk, progressive rock, hard rock, R&B, blues, and jazz.

David Paich and Jeff Porcaro had played together as session musicians on several albums and decided to form a band. David Hungate, Steve Lukather, Steve Porcaro and Bobby Kimball were recruited before their first album release. The band enjoyed great commercial success in the late 1970s and 1980s, beginning with the band's eponymous debut released in 1978. With the release of the critically acclaimed and commercially successful Toto IV (1982), Toto became one of the best-selling music groups of their era. They are best known for the Top 5 hits "Hold the Line", "Rosanna", and "Africa". Several changes to the line-up have been made over the years.

Their second studio album didn’t have any singles that made a huge impact in the charts, except for the song “99” which was inspired by the 1971 science fiction movie THX 1138. Hydra didn’t sell as strongly as their debut album, reaching #37 on the US Billboard 200 albums chart.

In 2013 Steve Lukather said of the album: “…You get successful with something, it’s always the whole thing where you don’t want to repeat it. So we tried something a little different with Hydra, and it sold well, although it might have been a little bit rushed for us. And here's some irony for you -- Rolling Stone beat up on the first album, and then when they reviewed Hydra, the opening line of the review is something like, "It doesn’t have the magic of the first album." We're immediately pissing ourselves on the floor with laughter. Who are these cats? Do they think we have amnesia? We were just following our muses, man. We were following our own rules and we didn't want to listen to anybody…”

For Hydra, the band were:

• Bobby Kimball          lead and backing vocals
• Steve Lukather         guitars, lead and backing vocals
• David Paich              keyboards, lead and backing vocals
• Steve Porcaro          keyboards
• David Hungate         bass
• Jeff Porcaro              drums, percussion

This album is a 2020 reissue on standard black vinyl housed in a gatefold sleeve with reproduced artwork and remastered audio by Toto and Elliot Scheiner, pressed in Europe via Columbia Records.