In her review of the American version of Very \u2019Eavy… Very \u2019Umble<\/i>, the debut effort from Uriah Heep, Melissa Mills of Rolling Stone<\/i> made the following declaration: \u201cIf this group makes it I\u2019ll have to commit suicide.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, yeah… tell us how you really<\/i><\/b> feel, Melissa.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know if she ever followed through with her threat, but based on listening to the eight tracks that vocalist David Byron and company proffered on this first release, one would be hard-pressed to say that this group was going places, so hold off on the floral arrangements for Ms. Mills. Musically, the album is all over the board, and the band\u2019s lack of a solid musical direction is what eventually sinks this album.<\/p>\n
The harmonized vocals that Uriah Heep became noted for is present already in this release. The problem, though, is Uriah Heep is a band without a musical map. Were they prog-rock? Were they pseudo-doom rockers in the vein of Black Sabbath? Were they pop rock? Were they jazz rock? The answer\u2014often found in just one song, was \u201call of the above\u201d\u2014and, had Spinal Tap existed back then, I can imagine this is what they would have sounded like.<\/p>\n
It’s not that tracks such as \u201cGypsy,\u201d \u201cDreammare\u201d or \u201cLucy Blues\u201d were bad<\/i> songs. There were hints of promise in these tracks, but the bombastic approach of throwing several musical styles against the wall and seeing if any of them stuck ends up sinking them before they had a fighting chance. \u201cReal Turned On\u201d is a prime example of this; pick a fuckin\u2019 style, and commit to it.<\/p>\n
The American version, simply titled Uriah Heep<\/i>, differs only in the replacement of \u201cLucy Blues\u201d with the song \u201cBird Of Prey.\u201d I can\u2019t even begin to address why they thought this was a good idea, with Byron going for falsetto notes that even King Diamond might have found to be unnecessary. For an album that was already struggling with identity issues, \u201cBird Of Prey\u201d certainly doesn\u2019t help their case whatsoever, and \u201cLucy Blues\u201d never should have been replaced.<\/p>\n
And yet, underneath the ultimate failures of this album, there lay a glimmer of promise. Mick Box\u2019s guitar work is strangely reminiscent of Gary Green\u2019s from Gentle Giant\u2014which I consider to be a good thing. Ken Hensley\u2019s organ work sometimes feels over the top (as heard on \u201cGypsy\u201d), but suggests something good lies underneath a bit of the sonic sludge.<\/p>\n
Overall, Very \u2019Eavy… Very \u2019Umble<\/i> (or Uriah Heep<\/i>, or whatever the hell you want to call it, it was your eight bucks) captures Uriah Heep struggling to find just where they fit in a musical landscape that, in 1970, tended to accept all comers. The issue, though, is they didn\u2019t have to try to cram every genre into one album\u2014hell, they sometimes tried to do this in one song<\/i>\u2014and might have benefited from taking a little more time to slap a few more coats of sonic paint onto these songs. It\u2019s interesting from a historic viewpoint, but that\u2019s about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6348],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-47267","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-uriah-heep","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47267","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=47267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=47267"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=47267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}