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Given the disjointed history of this album, you’d have every right to expect it to be a mess. The band’s third record, it was pieced together in fits and starts during 1977, but Pavlov’s Dog had fallen apart before it was released. And, until 2007, it was only available in a bootleg version. This latest edition has been updated with a vast array of bonus material, mostly live.

But the real bonus lies in the impressive, if understated quality of the original album. The band took a surprising turn towards melodic hard rock, even recording a discarded REO Speedwagon song, namely It’s All For You. There’s also a Marty Balin cover, Today, done to be more commercial. But this track pales alongside Jenny and I Love You Still, both of which balance a new AOR quiver with exhaustive musicality, and David Surkamp’s high-pitched tones.

Under different circumstances, Pavlov’s Dog could have been sitting on a huge seller. The extra tracks really are no more than filler material, although it is intriguing to hear Stop Short, a catchy amalgam of progressive intricacy and a radio friendly tunefulness.

‘Lost classic’ is an overused term, but there’s really no better description for this.

Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for Record Mirror magazine in the late 70s and Metal Fury in the early 80s before joining Kerrang! at its launch in 1981. His first book, Encyclopedia Metallica, published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. Dome is also credited with inventing the term "thrash metal" while writing about the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad in 1984. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1998 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and was a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009. He died in 2021.