Chris Brockbank’s Phantom Mk V - Phantom album review

Veteran Aussie rocker gets his (fifth) act together

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Chris Brockbank’s Phantom Mk V - Phantom album

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Such is the apparent depth of Chris Brockbank’s devotion to all things Purple, he’s even named his band Mk V. A well-established barroom performer around his native Sydney, Brockbank’s influences are undeniable on this French label release – Jeff Morris’s chunky organ has Jon Lord’s fingerprints plastered all over it, and singer Steve Mulry channels both Dio and Gillan.

However, it’s Brockbank’s Blackmore-ish Strat and punchy songs that hit the spot hardest, even if So Clear seems to be auditioning for mid-period Rainbow and One O’Clock rather rewrites Speed King. They even get away, in 2017, with a song titled Keep On Rockin’ And Rollin’, which boogies exactly how you would expect it to.

But they won’t apologise for loving this kind of old-school hard rock, and you should be equally unashamed to lap it up.

Johnny Sharp
Johnny Sharp

Johnny is a regular contributor to Prog and Classic Rock magazines, both online and in print. Johnny is a highly experienced and versatile music writer whose tastes range from prog and hard rock to R’n’B, funk, folk and blues. He has written about music professionally for 30 years, surviving the Britpop wars at the NME in the 90s (under the hard-to-shake teenage nickname Johnny Cigarettes) before branching out to newspapers such as The Guardian and The Independent and magazines such as Uncut, Record Collector and, of course, Prog and Classic Rock.