GALACTIC ZOO DOSSIER

"Galactic Zoo Dossier" is the debut full-length studio album by UK rock artist Kingdom Come (marketed in the US as Arthur Brown´s Kingdom Come). The album was released through Polydor Records in October 1971. After the split-up of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, lead vocalist Arthur Brown worked with Strangelands, Rustic Hinge, and the Puddletown Express, but none of them for too long and when he met bassist Dennis Taylor the two of them founded Kingdom Come in September 1970 (Tayler became the band´s tour manager). Although the band name was just Kingdom Come, the label felt they needed to market the band under the Arthur Brown´s Kingdom Come in the US, to signal that Arthur Brown was the lead vocalist in the band. This was due to the huge commercial success of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown´s major 1968 hit single "Fire", which made that band pretty famous in the US.

The "Galactic Zoo Dossier" is in some ways the natural successor to The Crazy World of Arthur Brown´s debut and sole album release (the 1968 eponymously titled album), but brought into the seventies. So while this still features some hard rocking guitars and organic drums and bass, "Galactic Zoo Dossier" is an even more theatric, progressive, and psychadelic release. Brown sounds like Tom Jones on acid and his powerful and quite varied vocals are one of the great assets of "Galactic Zoo Dossier". The clever and intriguing organ/VCS 3 synthesizer use bring a lot of atmosphere and dynamics to the music.

When the band are most challenging I´m reminded of a less technical Gentle Giant, but Kingdom Come are generally not easily labelled. This is very eclectic music it can go from mellow psychadelic rock, to dissonant progressive rock, to classical influenced music parts, to theatrical sections, to jazz/rock and blues rock in a matter of minutes. Kingdom Come strike a good balanced between the ominous, melancholic, and silly and humurous, so "Galactic Zoo Dossier" is an album spanning wide on the mood scale.

If you (like me) felt that The Crazy World of Arthur Brown was a bit immature and not that well produced, a lot of the otherwise undeniable potential of that group is fulfilled here. "Galactic Zoo Dossier" is well produced, well composed, and well performed. It´ll challenge you, it´ll make an emotional impact on you, and on occaion it´ll rock you too. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.