Label: Bronze Records (Germany), 258 295
Style: Hard Rock
Country: London, England
Time: 39:16
Format: Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHz
Size: 211 Mb
Charts: AUS #19, GER #31, US #103, FIN #3, JPN #47.
The
second album from perennially underrated British rockers Uriah Heep is a
bit of an unfortunate one. It’s not Salisbury’s fault that it’s wedged
between two of the band’s acclaimed classics, but stuck there it is, and
so it can’t help but feel slightly inferior to them. Whether you prefer
Very ‘Eavy... Very ‘Umble or Look At Yourself, you will like it better
than Salisbury - a shame, as fans of the band will doubtless be aware,
as it has more than enough to make it worthy of your time. More firmly
in the Prog zone than before, it features a sixteen minute epic on one
side, and streamlined the songwriting on the other to somewhat avoid the
high drama of previous epics like Gypsy (as much as I like that classic
tune, I can’t fault their decision) in favour of solid, heavy, rock
songs that still stand with the best nearly forty years later.
For
what it’s worth, you can partially blame Salisbury’s
less-than-brilliance on keyboardist Ken Hensley getting the majority of
writing credits this time around. Don’t be put off, however, as it’s
hard not to be pleasantly overwhelmed by the falsetto overload that
greets you on opener Bird Of Prey’s arrival, the band heavy as ever and
more than capable of setting into a captivating rock groove behind
vocalist David Byron, although it’s not the greatest opening track ever.
In some ways, I’d have preferred following track The Park to open the
album, starting off as it does with gentle acoustic guitars and very
soft organs, building into a rather gorgeous ballad with a great bit of
proggy keyboard action partway through. Time To Live is where things
really kick off, guitar and organs backing a gloriously upbeat
performance from Byron with a great solo from guitarist Mick Box. It’s
annoyingly short, just under four minutes long when it could have gone
on for another ten, but is followed by the great Lady In Black, which
has a melancholic feel aided by the extended, and awesome, group
wailing.
Everything throughout is very melodic and laid-back, with
little of the stomp that fans of the band’s debut will expect, although
the soloing that kicks off the excellent High Priestess (my personal
favourite track from this album) makes up for it. The main attraction
is, of course, the flamboyant sixteen-minute title track, which features
a twenty-four piece orchestra and sounds more like the soundtrack to a
Pink Panther film than you’d expect. It’s quite surprising how buried
the band are beneath the orchestra (it takes about ten minutes to get a
guitar solo) yet you don’t find yourself minding, but be forewarned that
the non-band instruments do dominate for most of it, and those of a
less classic cinematic mindset may find themselves bored, the sillies -
experienced proggers should love it if they let it carry them along.
Annoyingly,
there are substantial tracklisting differences between the usual and US
versions of this album, the Americans not just getting some rather
Metal artwork, but also High Priestess at the start of the album instead
of Bird Of Prey and inserting Simon The Bullet Freak before the title
track. If you come from my side of the pond, be sure to check the latter
track out, as it’s a good one. Finally, stepping back and considering
all in its whole, it’s hard to sum Salisbury up. Bear with me; I find
that the more I listen to this band, the easier it gets to appreciate
them. It’s certainly not a simple matter to churn out quality rock
n’roll, and that the ‘Heep were doing it so expertly just two years into
their career says a lot for them. Rock bands from the 70s are, of
course, far more numerous than the Sabbath/Purple/Priest triumvirate
that Metalheads typically worship, and although some names forgotten are
best left that way, I can’t imagine many devotees of the decade would
say the same for Uriah Heep. This is definitely worth hearing, but
ultimately not worth hunting down unless you’re going through the ‘Heep
discography as I am. Detract 15 from the score given if you are skipping
around.
(metalreviews.com/reviews/album/6359)
Album recorded and mixed in the analog domain - AAD. That is, a minimum of digital processing.
A=Analog.
D=digital. The first letter stands for how the music was recorded. The
second letter for how it was mixed. The third letter stands for the
format (all CD's will have D as the last letter).
01. Bird Of Prey (04:21)
02. The Park (05:47)
03. Time To Live (04:08)
04. Lady In Black (04:51)
05. High Priestess (03:46)
06. Salisbury (16:22)
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