LOOK AT YOURSELF

With 'Look At Yourself', Uriah Heep would continue the streak of excellent albums that began with 'Salisbury'. While the band would never write a track as long as Salisbury again, their third album would still be recorded in the prog spirit. Originally adorned with a mirrored sleeve to enhance the title of the album, this was the album that defined Heep's musical direction.

The opening track, Look At Yourself is a heavy anthemic rocker. To me this track spells Uriah Heep, and would be one of the best tracks to represent the band. The band employ the sensational percussion skills of the legendary Ghanaian band Osibisa to help build up to an explosive climax.

I Wanna Be Free is a less satisfactory song, with little to keep the prog ear interested.

One of the highlights of the album is the ten-minute monster track July Morning. This is a very dramatic song with good lyrics and long instrumental sections. This song was originally crafted from three seperate songs, according to the sleeve notes. The outro consists of 4 minutes based around a repeating theme on the organ, rather like the outro to Starship Trooper or I Want You (She's So Heavy), and guest star Manfred Mann appears on Moog here.

Side 2 opens with the 5-minute Tears In My Eyes. The first verse doesn't give you much hope for the song, but when you realise that the instrumental is almost 3 minutes long, it doesn't seem like such a bad track after all. Unfortunately, this would be the best quality to expect from the band's songs in a few years to come.

The best track for my money is Shadows of Grief, Uriah Heep's most progressive number. At almost 9 minutes, this track is wild, complex and unpredictable. This experimental piece feels like around 5 songs shoved together, and it sounds great.

What Should Be Done is a piano-based piece which is remarkable in that it was recorded before it was three hours old. Unfortunately, that seems to be the only remarkable thing about it.

Love Machine reminds me greatly of a similar track on the band's debut, Real Turned On. As well as having a bluesy rhythm, the cringeworthy lyrics have returned: 'Lovely little lady / You've got me on the run / You're a love machine / And you say that I'm your gun'. To be honest, I don't really understand the 'Love Machine' analogy because I cannot think of a machine that requires a gun. The lyric 'The only time she's happy / Is when the bullets fly' doesn't help. Rather than have a proper finale, this album groans to a halt at the end of this track, a peculiar way to finish.

Along with 'Salisbury' and 'Demons and Wizards' this is definitely one of the recommended Heep albums for beginners. Most Heep fans agree that the bands true sound started here, and with so many great moments, this is about as enjoyable as Heep gets!