Nice ‘N’ Greasy

This album had a tangled release history. In the US, it was retitled Atomic Rooster IV (since their self-titled debut never got a US release), and the track listing was shuffled. The band only underwent one lineup change since the previous year’s Made In England, with guitarist Steve Bolton departing and John Goodsall replacing him. “Save Me” is an uptempo reworking of “Friday The 13th,” from the debut, speeding up the tempo and adding horns. At this point the group’s thumping blues/R&B jams, with heavy psychedelic guitar solos tearing up the landscape, sounded a lot like the work of contemporaneous US bands Rare Earth and Cactus, with some Westbound-era Funkadelic thrown in (“Voodoo To You,” “Goodbye Planet Earth”). It’s hard to imagine fans of the band’s early doom-prog material gravitating toward this, but fans of heavy blooze grooves will find much to enjoy.