Styx - STYX***

Movement For The Common Man/Right Away/What Has Come Between Us/Best Thing/Quick Is The Beat Of My Heart/After You Leave Me

Eponymous debut album from the American progressive band Styx. They would become enormously popular later in the decade but this first effort is heavily dependent on covers making the group indistinguishable from many others.

“Styx is clearly the work of an emerging band as evidenced by the amount of covers. Only Best Thing and parts of the opening track were self penned, but the covers are of songs I’ve never heard before and are ably performed. The style is a crossover of blues-rock, hard-rock, and some forays into prog, all of which fail do anything to set Styx apart from a myriad of other bands doing the exact same thing in the early 70s.”

“Considering what they would later morph into, this is surprisingly good, though not great. Overall, it's a mix of good, and not so good, semi-commercial, hard edged prog, with only some of the annoying vocal harmonies and synth that characterize their later, well recognized sound.”

“As a huge Styx fan, I'm the first to admit that this isn't the best thing the group has ever done. They had a long way to go until they found the sound that they were comfortable with. However, that doesn't make this a bad album. As far as rock albums from the early 70s go, this one can stand on its own merits.”

“With Movement For The Common Man you have a fantastic prog rock suite. The rest is just generic mainstream blues-rock I'm afraid.”

“Side one is more in an early progressive rock mode, and quite good at that. Side two though is the real charm with a mid-western hard rock sound similar to Grand Funk at their best. Nothing outstanding, but a good listen all the way through.”

“Every song is well written, well produced, and performed flawlessly. I can see now how Styx became progressive rock giants.”

“For the typical listener, this may seem like a rather arcane addition to their music collection, but it does stand as the musical incarnation for what was to become one of the most popular bands. Mostly covering songs written by others, Styx show good rock and roll flair, and indications of some of the great progressive rock that they would generate as their career advanced.”