In 1977, it wouldn’t have surprised me if people had written off
\nUriah Heep as a band caught in a black hole. The British stalwarts
\nof progressive-based rock had lost several key members, and both
\ntheir music and sales were suffering. With the sacking of founding
\nmember\/lead vocalist David Byron (and the subsequent departure of
\nbassist John Wetton), some people might have been ready to pull the
\nplug on Uriah Heep.<\/p>\n
But something happened in 1977, with the release of
\nFirefly<\/i>. Uriah Heep, in effect, was reborn thanks to the
\naddition of vocalist John Lawton and bassist Trevor Bolder. The
\nmusic sounded fresher, and the end result showed a group still
\nstruggling with who they were, but suggesting they had gotten back
\non track.<\/p>\n
Latwon sounds a lot like Byron, which helps the transition but
\ndoesn’t make it sound like the band is trying to replace Byron with
\na carbon copy. What this does, in effect, is re-energizes the
\nmusic, making these songs sound as if many of them came from Uriah
\nHeep’s glory period.<\/p>\n
For well over half of
\nFirefly<\/i>, it’s almost as if Uriah Heep can do no wrong.
\nTracks like “The Hanging Tree,” “Who Needs Me” and “Wise Man”
\nsuggest that these tracks could have been as big of a hit as “Easy
\nLivin'”. Why some of these tracks weren’t given a fighting chance,
\nI just don’t understand. (The only exception to the praise: I could
\nhave lived without the falsetto vocals on parts of “Been Away Too
\nLong”, but it’s otherwise a very good song.)<\/p>\n
One thing which helps
\nFirefly<\/i> is bringing Bolder’s bass up to the forefront; it
\nalmost is as if more muscle has been added to the classic Uriah
\nHeep sound, and it’s a change which works well for the band.<\/p>\n
The difficulty for
\nFirefly<\/i> is that the band soon dips back into the overblown
\nstyle which nearly sunk the band before. Tracks like “Rollin’ On”
\nand “Firefly” are treated as if they are magnum opuses by the band;
\nunfortunately, the songs turn out to be all glitz, little substance
\n– and that’s a bit disappointing, especially seeing how much
\nprogress the band had made.<\/p>\n
However, when you take everything into account,
\nFirefly<\/i> is a better album than the statistics say it should
\nhave been. The progress that Uriah Heep made with this disc is
\nastounding, especially when compared to
\nReturn To Fantasy<\/i> and
\nHigh And Mighty<\/i>. Whether the band would be able to maintain
\nthis progress remains to be seen… and we’re working our way to
\nthose albums as fast as we can.<\/p>\n
Of the four bonus tracks included, “Crime Of Passion” is a
\npleasant surprise, and is a track which most definitely should have
\nbeen included on
\nFirefly<\/i> in the first place. “A Far Better Way” is a decent
\nenough track, but it doesn’t really feel like it fit the general
\nmold of the album. The two alternate versions of songs, “Do You
\nKnow” and “Wise Man,” are pleasant enough, but they break no new
\nground.<\/p>\n
\nFirefly<\/i> is the kind of album that Uriah Heep should have
\nbeen making all along, and even with its weaknesses, suggests that
\ngreat things were to be expected again from one of Britain’s most
\nunsung bands of the ’70s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25691,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6348],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-36897","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-uriah-heep","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36897"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}