URIAH HEEP - LIVE

Uriah Heep must have been a great live experience. Not only would they leave out the substandard fillers that disgraced their studio albums, they would also add great improvised extensions to the songs.

Some songs that I never cared for all that much, like Sunrise, Sweet Lorraine and Traveller In Time benefit greatly from the live energy boost they get here. They are certainly not the highpoint of the concert but serve as a good up-tempo start. July Morning however has lost some of its threatening atmosphere but the performance is ok.

Gypsy has doubled in length and the extension works really well. Of course with the kind of entrancing 2-note riff that this song is built around you could easily go on forever. But they also added some interesting and fun improvisations in the middle of it. Unfortunately, the drum solo at the end is as boring as drum solos tend to get. Cicle of Hands is a great update over its stuffy studio original, the finale is just great.

Not all songs are equally strong though. Easy Livin' and Look At Yourself were a lot tighter on the studio albums, Love Machine is an energetic take on the original. I'm somewhere around 3.5 stars, but given this is a live album it would need to be just a tad stronger to recommend it to anyone but the Uriah Heep fan base.