WONDERWORLD

We are in 1974 now; URIAH HEEP has released 6 studio albums and a live one between mid-1970 and 1973; this is maybe a record , even for back then when releasing a new album every year was the norm. 6 albums (from good to great) in 3 years, you have to expect one day, the inspiration and energy will dry at some point. Finally, the first bump will arive with WONDERWORLD.

Despite the title, we are not entering anything close to wonderful when listening this album. I guess KEN HENSLEY after composing most of the songs of UH repertoire run out of ideas and inspiration. So KEN HENSLEY discovered the virtue of democracy and let the other members of the band join him in the joy of writing great new anthems, so to speak.

I can't see one number of this album that could make it on any URIAH HEEP compilation or best-of; a lot of middle of the road rockers like ''Suicidal man'' or the tired ''So tired'' or the inept ''something or nothing''with nothing special. You listen to them once and after it's over, you can't remember anything about these songs: dull, uninspired, completely forgetable.

On the other hand, URIAH HEEP is trying to get into the power ballads; not a success either, even if the title track WONDERWORLD is the best track of the album, imho. Even DAVID BYRON seems to go through the motions and has hard time to bring his passion to these weak songs. I guess was a reason KEN HENSLEY was almost the sole writer of the band: the other ones , especially MICK BOX, only bring bland rockers with no meat on the table; So when KEN HENSLEY gets tired and lack inspiration, the whole band is set to suffer badly.

''I won't mind'' is for me the best part of the album, thanks to a great extended guitar solo from MICK BOX; But again, everything goes down badly after that with the awful ''We got WE''.............iS it the same band that came up with LOOK AT YOURSELF? difficult to believe how the mighty have fallen.

2 STARS

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