Sometimes, as a band, you eventually end up embodying the characteristics of your chosen name. Much the same as pets and their owners who slowly morph into looking like one another. It’s out of your hands — it just happens.

When five schoolmates in St. Albans, England started a band in 1961 and decided to call themselves The Zombies (at the suggestion of a member who then proceeded to leave the group almost immediately afterwards), the boys barely knew what the term meant. Only at the end of the decade did George Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead firmly establish zombies in the cultural landscape, but lots of bands were forming in the early 60’s, and confusion abounded as they all kept unwittingly giving themselves the same names — this, at least, was unique.

In 1964, after years of honing their craft around the local pubs and clubs, the band won a beat group competition in London, signed a contract with Decca Records, and released their first single, “She’s Not There,” which shot up to #2 in the US and just missed the Top 10 in the UK. Astonishingly, The Zombies would only once more place a song on the UK pop chart–at the end of 1964 with “Tell Her No”–and that single still fell outside of the Top 40. Their next 15 singles would inexplicably fail to chart at all in their home country (and it wasn’t much better in the US).

Having been dropped by Decca and feeling frustrated by their continued lack of success, The Zombies entered Abbey Road in the summer of 1967 to record only their second full-length album. On their way in they (figuratively) waved to The Beatles, now exiting the premises having just recorded Sgt. Pepper within those hallowed walls. But while one band was peaking, the other was valleying. Over the ensuing months, tensions flared in the studio, words were exchanged, frustrations boiled over, and when the sessions ended, so did the band.

The resulting album, Odessey And Oracle, quietly failed both critically and commercially in the UK in the spring of 1968, and the former members of The Zombies began searching for alternate musical avenues. Their new US record company, CBS, didn’t even bother releasing it.

In the meantime, American organist/producer/songwriter Al Kooper heard the album on a record-buying trip through London and flipped for it, contacting the president of CBS and insisting he release the record, which he reluctantly proceeded to do.

The album still couldn’t find an audience, however, and as a list-ditch effort to recoup a little cash, CBS released “Time Of The Season” as a single. Nobody had thought to do so over the previous year. Six months later, after a slow crawl upwards, the song ended its long journey to classic rockhood at #3 on the US chart in the spring of 1969. Somehow, it still did not chart in the UK. But no matter! What was once dead, had now been brought back to life. The Zombies were reanimated.

Sort of.

Unfortunately, not everyone wanted to get the old band back together. A couple of the guys tried to refashion some old material, but that gained no traction. Instead, fake Zombies arose in different spots around the globe, a veritable epidemic of pseudo-Zombies attempting to cash in on the big hit with concerts and appearances, until they, too, were finally laid to rest.

But you can’t keep a good Zombie down. Revived in body and spirit (and name) in the year 2000, the originals have found new life once again, recording albums and touring the world ever since.

So you don’t have to worry, all your worried days are gone. Here’s the least you need to know:

Greatest Hits Their 3 biggest hits plus all those failed singles. Track after track of moody, catchy, shoulda been a contender pop. Maybe people were put off by the name. My hot take: most underrated band of the 1960’s. Fight me.

Odessey And Oracle With its prolonged critical and commercial failure upon release, you’d think this album is terrible. But no (only the spelling is terrible), it’s now considered one of the cornerstones of the English pop canon, in the same company as records by The Beatles, The Kinks, and The Who. Took a long time.