In Hearing Of Atomic Rooster

The third Atomic Rooster album is a transitional effort; guitarist John Cann and drummer Paul Hammond were fired after the sessions were completed, and there’s a new singer, Pete French, who’s a somewhat generic early ’70s British white-boy-blooze howler, not quite on the level of Steve Marriott, never mind Paul Rodgers. Despite the behind-the-scenes chaos, this is one of the band’s more hard-charging albums; “Breakthrough” and “Break The Ice” get the album off to a rocking start, and “Head In The Sky” showcases a guitar riff almost worthy of Deep Purple, while “A Spoonful Of Bromide Makes The Pulse Rate Go Down” is a ferocious instrumental, and the opening drum-and-organ beat on “The Rock” cries out to be sampled somewhere.