WAKE THE SLEEPER

My enthusiasm did diminish as I played the album a few times at home. Not because it's a bad album, just that , as with most Uriah Heep releases, the songwriting varies from great to filler. If anything, I would compare this album to Uriah Heep's Sweet Freedom & Wonderworld period, with some of Return to Fantasy.

Wake the Sleeper opens the album scorching all out, full tilt guitar and organ leading the way. Tears of the World instantly brings to mind the best of the Lawton years such as Sympathy. Shadow strikes me as if the group had finally honed Walking in your Shadow's riff to what it could have been.

But then the overall weakness of the album - songs that are middling at best, like Overload, which comes across as Uriah Heep reclaiming riffs that Spinal Tap took from them. War Child and What Kind of God are good & heavy. But along with most of the others, I end up thinking about the lesser known lights of the 80s pop metal brigade and the formulaic approach to songwriting that many took.

Light of a Thousand Stars , Book of Lies reminds me of nothing else than the kind of second rate material that filled Whitesnake albums pre - Slide It In. Decent, and you can see the band knows its' craft well. But the they have no staying power.

If you're a fan, then this one's worth it. I would bet, though, that you already have it. For others, it's best to think about the mid 70s albums and how you like them. If the great & good songs were enough to overlook the mediocre, then you'll find enough here to make you happy.

For me, Uriah Heep, even at its' peak was a band whose releases were well worth combing through for songs to make an anthology. But this album doesn't have many, and the best ones have been done better by the group & many an 80s metal band.

So sadly, as I like to see groups like this able to maintain a respectable career - I rate it a 2. Though I will be playing it for a few old friends before I trade it back at Spin-It.

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