WAKE THE SLEEPER

Uriah Heep is one of those bands that I have not followed that closely through the many years they have been together. Sure I appreciated their classic albums "Demons and Wizards" and "The Magicians Birthday", but other than those albums, I have only snuck into their history here and there with a few albums, hoping that they come back to that near perfection they had in those days, hoping that they had improved on their sound, but only finding out that they seem to go backwards most of the times that I have checked them out. I purchased albums like "Fallen Angel" and "Abominog" only to be mostly disappointed. I even went backwards in time and tried out "Very 'Eavy, Very 'Umble", and, except for a few tracks, didn't really hear anything that interested me.

"Wake the Sleeper" interested me because it was their return after a 10 year hiatus and the cover was nice. I figured it was time to try them out again. Well, they did update their sound some, and after hearing the first two tracks, it sounded like they still retained the heavy organ sound along with the heavy rocking tracks. But they still reminded me of a poor-man's "Deep Purple". "Tears of the World" has some impressive guitar solos, but other than that, there's not a lot of change from the first 2 tracks.

By the time you get to "Light of a Thousand Stars", you are hoping that you might get some variety, but instead you get a mediocre song that sounds like an attempt at a single. This same mediocrity continues through "Heaven's Rain" and "Book of Lies". The songs just get more and more lackluster and emotionless. "What Kind of God" is a slower song with a good point to make, but the emotion that should be there for the lyrics and the subject is sorely lacking. The best part is the instrumental that starts at the 4:50 mark and continues to the end. Not a bad song, and at least it's a little different from the sameness that precedes it, but it still doesn't really justify buying the album.

After that, the music returns to more mediocrity with "Ghost of the Ocean" and continues to the end. Overall, this album just doesn't have the spirit of the band at it's peak, even if Uriah Heep was never the amazing band they hoped to be, they came really close to it early on, but then they tried too hard and then fell victim to the corporate machine. You get a bunch of songs on this album that have no progressive value to them at all, and the songs just sound too much the same and they also lack emotion. To me, it's just another run of the mill album. Oh well, I'll keep hoping that they come up with something interesting someday. Who knows? Maybe their newest album?