FIREFLY

Wow! Who knew that, with a new singing and bassist, that Uriah Heep would still live, and give a very progressive rock type of record? No one though that they could, but Mick Box and Ken Hensley, the two original members, pulled it off! The cover art is excellent too, with a beautiful fairy type of woman, over a lake near a rainbow. The music is definatly awesome, and is some of their most proggy moments ever.

"The Handing Tree" has a nice keyboard intro, followed by some nice drums by lee Kerslake, awesome baslines from Trevor Bolder, nice guitar by Mick Box, and some awesome vocals from John Lawton. He instantly gets with the groove of Uriah Heep. This song is more or so pop prog, but still has a nice and different feeling than most of the other prog acts at the time, who were pushed out by Punk Rock. The lyrics are excellent and seem to tell a short story. "Been Away Too Long" is a good track, with some nice keyboards and excellent guitar parts at the beginning. It seems that it would be a much slower song, but then after a good yell from John, it seems to get much more hard rocking than one would think. But it's still a slower song. The guitar is awesome throughout, but it seems to get quieter when John starts to sing. "Who Needs Me" is a hard rocking track, and much different from the first two tracks. It's much more like their older songs, but the lyrics seem to be much less interesting than most of the albums, but they are alright. The guitar is very prominant, and the bassline is excellent and loud. "Wise Men" is one of the more proggy tracks, though it's a bit shorter than one would think. The musicianship is excellent, with a slow organ and vocal intro, with John singing some oh's at the beginning. The lyrics are fairly good, but not the best of the album. This song is very nice slow, and the guitar works well with the flowing basslines of Trevor, they work well with the excellent keyboard work from Ken Hensley. "Do You Know" is in the same style of some songs from their previous albums, and is much more heavy metal with the hammond organ turned on high. The guitar is loud and very interesting. The bassline is very simple, but works well and is very loud. The vocals are excellent, but the lyrics are very simple and are very uninteresting. "Rollin' on" is one of the two longer than normal tracks, which in reality means just about seven minutes, but it's a bit longer than their normal songs. It's a great song, the guitar is excellent, and the moog sounds great. The bassline is working great with the drumming from Lee. The lyrics are great, and the vocals sing it passionatly with some excellent vocal harmonies. "Sympathy" was the lead single, and it's a great short prog rocker. The guitar solo at the beginning sounds excellent, and is very loud, and sounds a bit doubled. The lyrics are great, with a great sense of rhythm on this song. John turns in a great vocal performance, with some very nice falsetto in parts. The bassline is fairly simple for this kind of song, but it's much better than some of what the Punk Rockers were doing at the time, playing stupidly picking is with a crappy bass. "Firefly" is the best of the two extended tracks, and is the best track of the whole album. The keyboard intro and vocal intro is followed by song really nice hard rocking part, and then it goes to a soft much more acoustic sound. This song has some really high contrast with it's self, and it's a great story type of song. This song is a very mini prog-epic.

This album is great, but has some slightly bad lryics at times, but most of this album is great and is very proggy considering their last few albums. This is a full 5 stars, you need to have this album in your progressive rock collection, or your heavy metal collection.