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Uriah Heep - The Best Of Uriah Heep CD (album) cover

THE BEST OF URIAH HEEP

Uriah Heep

 

Heavy Prog

3.22 | 16 ratings

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zravkapt
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
2 stars Back in the days before I had internet access, if I wanted to hear what a band I read about sounded like I would have to buy one of their CDs. If I was lucky I could find a cheap used copy. That's how I ended up with this album. This compilation didn't do much for me and I never explored their discography. Years later I heard some of their early albums and thought I might have been too harsh in my opinion of them. The only song I really liked on it was "Lady In Black", why I didn't enjoy "Gypsy" as much back then I'm not sure of. I love that song now. These songs generally came off to me as grade-B Deep Purple (with a little bit of grade-B Queen thrown in). Of course the band's longer album cuts were more interesting and this is mainly made up of singles and shorter album tracks.

One thing about the music here is very clear: it sounds very, very much like something from the early 1970s. I've always heard the Heep referred to as a mix of early metal and early prog. On this compilation you'll get a lot of the 'metal' side but not too much of the 'prog' side. "July Morning" is the longest and one of the best songs here. Even though I stated this sounds very early '70s, I can also hear some influence these guys had on some metal bands from the 1980s. I never heard the albums UH did with John Wetton after he left Crimson yet; doing this review just reminded me of that.

Even from a purely non-prog perspective, this compilation is not the greatest introduction to the music of Uriah Heep. Ya gotta hear those long album cuts. If you like Deep Purple and a lot of early '70s hard rock/proto-metal in general, you will probably dig these guys. Just don't start here. Any of the albums they released between 1970-73 would be a better bet. There are probably better compilations out there but I have not heard them. This thing here gets 2 stars.

zravkapt | 2/5 |

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