HEAD FIRST

After the success of Abominog Uriah Heep released this album, clearly influenced by the AOR and hard rock bands of that period. If the formula seemed to work well on the previous album, even at the cost of some of their trademark sound, now the band sounded too american and commercial for my taste. The cover looks better than Abominog, but the music inside does not.

Here the problem is not even the kind of sound, really. It´s the quality of the songs that suffers. While the first post Hensley album had some very strong tracks, here they simply tried to follow the path, but ended up recording tunes that not as good. Head First was a tentative LP: not really bad, but the band was trying to look what they´re not. Like throwing away the last vestiges of their glorious past and gain a whole new audience. Yes, that happened a lot at the time. It may nave worked for some (like Scorpions) but not for UH. At least not as much.

Anyway, things would go even more downward by the next release, Equator. But fortunaltly after that, UH would rise again, slowly, but steadly, with a better line up and stronger CDs. Head First is for collectors and hardcore fans, only.