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Now including just a single original member, guitarist Earl Johnson, cult Canadian rockers Moxy have jumped on the ‘re-recording classic songs’ bandwagon in celebration of their 40th anniversary.

Much like Whitesnake’s perplexing Purple Album, the results are desperately disappointing. Moxy gave it their best shot on their 1975 debut, which featured sublime playing by guest guitarist Tommy Bolin. Mind you, Moxy II (’76) and Ridin’ High (’77), both produced by the estimable Jack Douglas, weren’t exactly slouches either.

All bar one of the songs here originally appeared on those first three full-length albums. Whereas the original Moxy were a nifty Canuck hybrid of Aerosmith and Free, the modern-day group just sounds like an overblown bar band.

They sorely miss the gritty vocals of frontman Buzz Sherman, who died in a motorcycle accident in 1983. Current singer Nick Walsh is a hyperventilating Seb Bach-alike, which just won’t do at all. Riding high? Nope, this one fell in the 3.40 at Chepstow./o:p

Geoff Barton is a British journalist who founded the heavy metal magazine Kerrang! and was an editor of Sounds music magazine. He specialised in covering rock music and helped popularise the new wave of British heavy metal (NWOBHM) after using the term for the first time (after editor Alan Lewis coined it) in the May 1979 issue of Sounds.