INNOCENT VICTIM

After the very good Firefly, Uriah Heep seems to have tried to become more commercial with this album. It didn't work very well, this is easily their least good album since the debut album. There are filler on all Uriah Heep albums, but on this one there seems to be (almost) nothing but filler! The hit (in Germany?) Free Me is a good song, but a rather straightforward rock/pop song, clearly aimed at the radio. Free 'n' Easy is the only harder rocking song on this album, but it isn't at all memorable.

The best songs here are Illusion and The Dance. Illusion was originally longer and coupled with another composition called Masquerade. The full unedited version of this song is featured on the CD version of Innocent Victim as a bonus track. Too bad that they decided to edit it for the original album, since it was the last remaining hint at the past progressiveness of Uriah Heep (not implying, of course, that the full Illusion/Masquerade is by any means a progressive piece in any substantial sense).

Innocent Victim is then one of Uriah Heep's least progressive and also least hard rocking albums.