A wonderful two-fer serves up the complete recorded works of
Phoenix
, a band whose name may have been horribly contrived (cue an ocean of lazy critics describing them as rising from the ashes of
Argent
), but who restated the core values of the power trio at a time when too many other bands were confusing bigger for better.
Jim Rodford
,
John Verity
, and
Robert Henrit
blaze across their self-titled debut album, laying down a sound that might best be compared to a collision between
Thin Lizzy
and
Uriah Heep
-- which is what a lot of their parent band blueprinted in the first place; four years later,
Verity
Henrit
alone returned for
In Full View
, an equally powerful and perhaps even better album that retained the band's early vision while pushing forward into the new decade. An oft-overlooked branch of the now so-beloved
Zombies
/
family tree,
may not ever have blazed as brightly as their name suggested, but they were a fire in the darkness of late-'70s hard rock regardless. ~ Dave Thompson