Phoenix/In Full View

Personnel: John Verity (vocals, guitar); Jim Rodford (keyboards); Robert Henrit (drums).
Audio Mixer: Peter Kelsey.
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 and 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/Argent family tree, Phoenix 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