The Argent story continues! We've looked at the previous two albums, so in defiance of randomness (and yet randomly selected they were) we move on to the final Russ Ballard album, Nexus. Ballard's increasing disinterest in the band, made evident on 1973's In Deep, moves to crisis proportions on this album. The first three tracks are instrumental, penned by Rod Argent and Chris White, and heavily reliant on keyboards, leaving the hitmaker feeling a little high and dry. In some ways though, he got the last laugh in that the only hit song from this album, "Thunder and Lightning" was his creation. However his other songs are just so-so. Argent/White weren't having a lot of success on this album either outside the opening suite, making this probably one of the worst albums the band released.
Shortly after this album, Ballard finally cut his ties and went solo, and many of his songs were picked up by other major acts, like Santana and Rainbow. Argent would expand to a quintet to compensate for the loss of Ballard's talents on guitar and vocals, but the new members would drive the band so far into prog territory that they sound more like an opening act for the Mahavishu Orchestra on the next two albums.
Nexus used to be hard to find, but thanks to some smart double-package CD's and now the mp3 era, it's fairly easy to track down. I wouldn't spend a lot on it, but if you've got all or most of the others, why not add this one too. That's what I did!
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