DIFFERENT WORLD

This was the second album by what has become the longest running Uriah Heep line up. It sees them consolidating, but not really progressing from, the vast improvements made on their previous album "The raging silence". The gap of two years between these two albums can be attributed to the lack of interest from record companies in offering the band an album deal. While they were still enjoying a reasonable amount of success touring in some parts of the world, it seems they were not seen as sufficiently marketable to justify signing them up (a problem which persists for the band to this day).

Since Richard Dodd, who had produced "The raging silence", was unavailable, bassist Trevor Boulder assumed production duties. The album was eventually released early in 1991 to almost universal apathy. This was partly as a result of poor promotion, and the band subsequently severed their connection with Legacy records as a result.

"Different world" finds the band in pretty much the same world as their previous album, consisting of 10 fairly routine rock numbers. There is a little more diversity, with a children's chorus on "All god's children", but there's generally a sameness to the songs. The music is not particularly adventurous, leaning at times towards the AOR sound of Styx and Foreigner. It is really in the song writing department though that the weaknesses are exposed. While the performances are competent, the album cries out for a Ken Hensley composition for the band to exploit.

The title track was later transformed by its inclusion in the "Acoustically driven" set, which revealed the true strength of the track. It has to be said though, that strength is largely hidden here.

In all, a solid but dull album. While I kept buying Uriah Heep's new releases in the hope that they would rediscover their form of the 1970's, by the time of this album I was starting to despair. Little did I know then that the next album would prove the wait to have been worthwhile.

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