Time on Our Side

2014 album from the veteran British outfit. To play a new Colosseum album is to step into the unknown. Anything could happen. All bets are off. While less questing bands are content to issue fading photocopies of their best-selling work, TIME ON OUR SIDE is the sound of old friends embarking on new adventures. Eleven years have passed since TOMORROW'S BLUES: A lifetime in rock 'n' roll. The album may have been a pleasure to record, at drummer Jon Hiseman's own Temple Music Studio in Surrey, yet it's completion marks the end of a period of some uncertainty. "We started it in 2010 by meeting in the studio and playing through demos that had been written by the band members," the drummer remembers. "But after 2010, the future of Colosseum was always going to be decided by whether Barbara would be able to tour again." of course, multi-instrumentalist Barbara Thompson is a vital part of the Colosseum story. The completion alone of TIME ON OUR SIDE, then, is a towering achievement. That this new album is so dazzlingly successful is testament to the enduring genius of one of Britain's most inventive lineups. Almost a half-century after Colosseum's formation, this is unmistakably the sound of a band with gas still in the tank and endless lightbulbs popping over their heads. "I know that when we get together we all feel like we are coming home," says Hiseman. "This album was easy to make and it just feels right"