High And

High and Mighty is the ninth studio album by British hard rock band Uriah Heep, released in 1976 by Bronze Records in the UK and Warner Bros. Records in the US. High and Mighty was the last Uriah Heep album to feature vocalist and founding member David Byron, who was subsequently fired due to his troubles with alcohol (he later died in 1985)…

By 1976, Uriah Heep was on shaky ground. Although they had scored a big success with Return to Fantasy, the group was suffering from personality conflicts (vocalist David Byron left after this album) and division over their musical direction…

This is the album that solidified Uriah Heep's reputation as a master of gothic-inflected heavy metal. From short, sharp rock songs to lengthy, musically dense epics, Demons and Wizards finds Uriah Heep covering all the bases with style and power. The album's approach is set with its lead-off track, "The Wizard": it starts as a simple acoustic tune but soon builds into a stately rocker that surges forth on a Wall of Sound built from thick guitar riffs, churchy organ, and operatic vocal harmonies…

High and Mighty is the ninth studio album by British rock band Uriah Heep, released in 1976 by Bronze Records in the UK and Warner Bros. Records in the US. High and Mighty was the last Uriah Heep album to feature vocalist and founding member David Byron, who was subsequently fired due to his troubles with alcohol. John Wetton and Ken Hensley shared vocal duties on "One Way or Another". The album was not well received, as stylistically it veered from their earlier progressive rock vein into more mainstream territory, and lacked the group's signature lengthy compositions and fantastical subject matter.

This album has had over three decades to make an impact, and it says something for its staying power that, in the face of more recent, more generously programmed, and better mastered compilations of the duo's work, it remains one of the most popular parts of the Simon & Garfunkel catalog – which doesn't mean it isn't fraught with frustrations for anyone buying it…

This album has had over three decades to make an impact, and it says something for its staying power that, in the face of more recent, more generously programmed, and better mastered compilations of the duo's work, it remains one of the most popular parts of the Simon & Garfunkel catalog – which doesn't mean it isn't fraught with frustrations for anyone buying it. Its very existence is something of a fluke – in the spring of 1972, the five original Simon & Garfunkel albums, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM, Sounds of Silence, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme, Bookends and Bridge Over Troubled Water, were still selling almost as well as they had in the 1960s; indeed, Bridge Over Troubled Water had carved out a seemingly permanent place for itself on the charts for years; and between the continued radio play of the duo's biggest hits, and the inevitable discovery of their catalog by successive new waves of junior high and high school students, those five LPs stood among the most profitable parts of the Columbia Records back catalog, rivaling Bob Dylan's much larger library in sheer numbers.