It’s astounding that Odessey and Oracle was overlooked upon its release in 1968.  The Zombies knew while working on the album in the summer of 1967 that they’d likely break up after the album was released, and they did.  The album flopped and the members went their separate ways.  But something strange happened.  “Time of the Season”, the final cut on the album, became a hit belatedly and the album charted in 1969.

By the summer of 1967, despite two hit singles (“Tell Her No” and “She’s Not There”), The Zombies had been cut by Decca Records. And even though they signed to a new label, they had to independently finance a stereo version of Odessey and Oracle, because the label required it in stereo.  After all that, the album flopped with its UK release in ‘68, and the band members went their separate ways.  Odessey and Oracle sat virtually unnoticed until the eleventh hour of the decade, when the last cut on the album, “Time of the Season” became a hit in America.

So how could a high-quality psychedelic album by a band as well-known as The Zombies go almost completely unnoticed and unappreciated at the height of the psychedelic ‘60s?  I mean, it was mostly recorded during the summer of love and should have resulted in an immediate, and giant, hippie orgasm.  Instead, it withered on the vine and almost died.  Maybe it had been too long since the band’s previous studio LP in 1965.  Perhaps Cream and Hendrix were leading rock fans to believe that heavy was the only way to go.