It's the time of the season for The Zombies ''Odessey and Oracle' album

There's one thing you can say about the Zombies: They certainly take their time about things.

Sunday night, the band, whose signature '60s hits include "Tell Her No," "She's Not There" and "Time of the Season," is booked into Glenside's Keswick Theatre. Part of the program will be dedicated to a performance of the band's influential album, "Odessey and Oracle," in its entirety. The group's current U.S. tour marks the first time the band will re-create the LP live - a mere 47 years after its release.

"One of the things we're most proud of is the way that we've managed to build things out a second time," bragged band co-founder and keyboardist Rod Argent during a recent phone interview. "We're very proud of that because it happened very naturally. We never thought we'd be doing this again together."

That 70-year-old Argent - who in 1961 was a co-founder of the band with still-active lead singer Colin Blunstone - is playing under the Zombies' banner constitutes one of rock's more unanticipated tales.

The "Odessey and Oracle" saga begins in 1967 when the group recorded the album, which was pretty much ignored when released in 1968 but today is universally acclaimed as a masterpiece. Although "Time of the Season," the song most-identified with the Zombies, was on it, it wasn't released as a single until more than a year after the group called it quits.

"The reason [for the breakup] was totally about money," explained Argent. "There was no falling out between the members of the band. We've always been great friends through the whole of our lives."

But while he and then-bassist Chris White received royalties as the band's composers, the other members (including Blunstone) had to rely solely on touring for income, a situation they ultimately found untenable.

So, "Time of the Season" became an international smash, but there was no band to take advantage of the situation. Instead, Blunstone forged a post-Zombies solo career in the 1970s, while Argent assembled a band that bore his last name. In the mid-'70s, Argent-the-group had a hit single with "Hold Your Head Up" and was a regular headliner at mid-sized venues like the Tower Theater, where the group appeared several times.

It wasn't until 1999 that the seeds of a Zombies regeneration were planted "through an accident," according to Argent.

Argent played a charity gig in England one night, and Blunstone, who was in the audience, joined him for "She's Not There" and "Time of the Season."

"It felt so nice," Argent recalled, that the two former bandmates kicked around the idea of doing a half-dozen British dates "for old times' sake.

"To our amazement, we had a complete ball. And we gradually started to play a bit more on the road until we had a band that got super-tight."

The musicians were reluctant to kill the momentum their unit had established - they found themselves playing to increasingly large audiences, especially in America. That led them to the present, where they now have the financial ability to marshal, as Argent put it, "all of the forces necessary to reproduce every note that was on the 'Odessey & Oracle' album." It's an undertaking that involves added musicians and instruments to reproduce the LP's many parts, including Argent's multiple keyboard lines.

That success also has resulted in an album of new material, "Still Got That Hunger," which comes out today.

So, will the Zombies' successful resurrection lead to a reassembling of the band Argent (which also featured current Zombies' bassist Jim Rodford)? Not likely, said its namesake.

"I haven't got the energy," Rod Argent said, with a chuckle, "to commit to more than one band."

Keswick Theatre, 291 N. Keswick Ave., Glenside, 8 p.m., $39.50-$69.50. 215-572-7650, keswicktheatre.com.

On Twitter: @chuckdarrow