Urian Heep

This collection includes songs of the British rock band "Uriah Heep" for the period from 1976 to 1978, with the best lead-singer - and it was none other than John Lawton!

Chaos & Colour, the energetic and triumphant 25th studio album from British hard rock legends and progenators Uriah Heep, bristles with explosive classic rock guitars, supreme harmonies, and Heep's famously generous keyboard foundation. This deluxe edition includes a demo version of 'Save Me Tonight' as a bonus track. Led by founding member Mick Box, it is no surprise that themes of light, love and, ultimately, positivity are constant through the eleven tracks. Opener "Save Me Tonight" shows the band's weighty yet blistering chops, whilst "One Nation, One Sun" is a journey of soaring balladic contemplation.

Ballads? What ballads? They don't need no stinkin' ballads. Actually, most of these aren't true ballads, which are defined as either romantic/sentimental songs ("Rainbow Demon" darlin'?) or songs that repeat the same melody from stanza to stanza (think of that guy playing the acoustic guitar in Animal House). Uriah Heep did eventually write honest-to-goodness ballads, some of which are featured here: "Your Turn to Remember," "Free Me," and "Come Back to Me."…

Now, this really is a chunk to bite off and chew. This six-disc overview of the long, winding, and confounding career of Uriah Heep (confounding that Mick Box and Lee Kerslake have managed to keep it afloat for nearly 40 years), is the first box to take into consideration all the permutations this dinosaur juggernaut has been through…

This album was recorded their gig at San Diego Sports Arena in San Diego, California, February 8, 1974. The line-up featured Mick Box, David Byron, Ken Hensley, Lee Kerslake, Gary Thain, were so called "classic" Heep line up and it's easy to hear why. This night was a powerful night.

Although they had continued to record steadily after making a comeback with 1982's Abominog, Uriah Heep had slipped off the heavy metal world's radar by the mid-1990s. Just the same, they manage to notch up an impressive and well-received album in 1995 with Sea of Light. The key to this album's success is that it forsook the ill-judged pop metal stylings of albums like Equator for a return to the gothic-tinged old-school metal style that highlighted classic Uriah Heep albums like Look at Yourself. A great example is "A Time of Revelation," a gutsy rock tune that glides forwards on a one-two-three punch of thick guitar work, rousing organ riffs, and several layers of operatic vocal harmonies.

Evoking an era when prog, hard rock and heavy metal co-existed in an era of glorious, boundary-breaking music, the songs on this 2CD and digital collection trace the evolution of Heep from inexperienced studio musicians with everything to prove to bona fide, limo inhabiting rock stars. The Anthology cherry picks tracks from some of Heep’s most celebrated albums including ‘Demons And Wizards’, ‘Look At Yourself’, ‘Return To Fantasy’, ‘Equator’, ‘Conquest’ and ‘The Magician’s Birthday’. Created with the full collaboration of Heep themselves and curated by guitarist and founder member Mick Box, the reissues come as 2CD expanded packages, with the original album on CD1 re-mastered by renowned engineer Andy Pearce of Lou Reed and Black Sabbath fame and complete with liner notes in extensive booklet with rare photos by the bestselling rock author Joel McIver. Box and Heep’s sometime member Ken Hensley, composer of many of the band’s best-known songs, contribute to each album’s notes.

Blending plain old hard rock with prog rock tendencies and a clear ear for a good radio-ready pop hook, Uriah Heep never exactly wowed the critics, perhaps because their lyrical fascination with wizards and demons could make them seem as addled as Spinal Tap in that band's famous Stonehenge concert scene. But critics don't make rock memories, and Uriah Heep, despite countless lineup changes, remained a steady band that played at being outlaws on the run and produced at least a couple of enduring rock radio classics in the early '70s, most notably their fun versions of "Stealin'" and "Easy Livin'," both of which present the band at its best. This set has both of those songs, plus other bare-bone essentials like "Lady in Black" and "The Wizard," and for most casual fans, it'll fill the bill.