URIAH HEEP - LIVE

Being a long time Heep fan (even before I knew what the words prog' or metal mean) and due to the excellent track list I have a hard time rating this live album, because it's not one of their better releases.

As I said before, Look at Yourself, Tears in my Eyes, and Easy Living among others, are part of my all time favorites, but this live versions and the sound of the album are very poor in my opinion.

Something strange if you take in consideration that this album is a selection of their best recordings and that they were playing with the best line up ever presented by Uriah Heep, including the best bass player of Rock history, the legendary Gary Thain making an excellent rhythm section with Lee Kerslake.

Something that I always loved of Uriah Heep is the high dose of drama and mystery they provided to their music, specially to albums related with demons and magician's, but in this case they loose that darkness, the songs are more rock oriented but the arrangements are unidimentional and too simple for the bunch of talented guys they were at that point-

For example Tears in My Eyes was always one of the best and more clearly Prog' oriented tracks of the band, complex chorus and vocal arrangements, excellent wah - wah guitar and an incredible work with the keyboards, but in this album the song is flat, of course some head bangers will be happy because it's clearly oriented towards heavy metal, but they lost the prog' essence that made a classic of this song.

Magician's Birthday is also a great disappointment, a mutilated version that boosts the guitar parts over the excellent keyboards and the great epic July Morning sounds as a caricature of the original version.

The Rock Medley is totally out of place in a Uriah Heep album, that's ok for a band that doesn't have enough material, but Uriah Heep could have chosen any track from Look at Yourself, The Magician's Birthday or Demons and Wizards and would have pleased the fans (the ones who really matter) more than a simple medley.

After the hard bashing I gave to the album in comparison with the original versions of the tracks, everybody should be expecting a two or one star rating, but I must say Uriah Heep Live is not bad surely not good for the Uriah Heep standards, but many bands just dream playing in their best day as Uriah Heep in their worst, and the track list contains such wonderful music that can't be ruined even if the band does the possible to make them sound bad.

It's essential only for the true Uriah Heep fans, but if you are just starting to be familiar with this excellent band, leave this live album until you have every previous one.

With great pain (because really love this band) I will give Uriah Heep Live only three stars because the tracks and the lineup are the best possible, but nothing more because they proved they could do much better than this. album.