The Batlord

Uh. Aside from it being massively, massively overplayed on the radio, constantly, day and night, until I can no longer listen to "Shoot to Thrill" without instantly turning the station, Back In Black is overrated as all hell. It was cool for a while, and the songs are definitely well written, but it has none of the attitude or rawness that made AC/DC awesome. It just sounds like a slick, stadium rock imitation of AC/DC. Not to mention, Brian Johnson may be a better singer than Bon Scott, but he has no personality of his own, only volume.

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Unknown Soldier

That's for me to know and for you to not find out!

That's not a live album but a studio one. Their classic live album is If You Want Blood You've Got It.

According to All Music they give it the perfect five star score, so I think we're in the minority here.

I gotta say I really like Back in Black but do agree with your descriptions of both Bon Scott and Brian Johnson.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Unknown Soldier

Overview
Stray were destined to flirt with success which sadly never came, their debut album Stray at number nine on my 1971 list was a rich and diverse effort with its eclectic styles, but it failed to make any commercial impact. The dual writing and singing team of Del Bromham and Steven Gadd were a highly talented pair that could easily rival in ability Andy Powell and Ted Turner of Wishbone Ash and believe me that is saying something! Wishbone Ash in many ways, were the band that they were most similar to with the dual guitar attack, heavy jamming, harmonious leads, similar sounding vocalists and general feel. At this time Stray probably had the option of going down a more commercial avenue and putting out something that would accommodate the possibility of commercial success, or stick to their guns and go with their own eclectic style. The band decided on the latter option and went into the studio to record more of the same for their second album Suicide. Essentially it would be the same in concept and feel as the debut album, with the only real differences being the album’s negative title and the much heavier keyboard presence and darker feel to some of the songs. It’s obvious that the band had dark influences prior to recording, probably from the likes of Black Sabbath and Sir Lord Baltimore here, they then combined this with the roots rock presence that the band liked so much. The album was recorded in London in less than thirty hours studio time and is regarded as having a better production overall than the debut, which had a slightly rawer feel than the Suicide album. Finally I never mentioned this on the previous Stray post, but what was amazing were the ages of the band members on these first two albums and that was an average age of just 18-20 years of age! Based on the quality of music they were putting out, I think that’s amazing.

Del Bromham- Guitar/Keyboards/Vocals
Steve Gadd- Guitar/Vocals
Gary Giles- Bass
Ritchie Cole- Drums

Production- Hugh Murphy

Album
Son of the Father- A song about men going off to war and the song starts off as a slow lament, before kicking into its up-tempo verse/chorus section, which contains some truly memorable sections, before again transforming itself into a funeral type procession dirge. The song contains some really crunching metal guitar and is very much a prog song. Nature’s Way- Straight-up fuzzy sounding hard rocker. Where Do Our Children Belong- Slow and lazily paced with some nice harmonies, as far as I’m concerned Stray did this type of thing very well, others may not enjoy it. Jericho- An almost rampant sounding rocker, with its chiselled guitars and urgent sounding lyrics, has some really heavy sections and also a really dramatic descending guitar riff section, one of the most dynamic tracks the band ever put out. Run Mister Run- Southern rock influenced and highlighted by its big thumping bass and drums, also has a great heavy jamming section in the middle to later part of the song. Dearest Eloise- A Beatlesque sounding ballad and a snippet at just 2 minutes! Do You Miss Me- A great song with its heavy American jazzy feel and frantic pace, almost matching the frantic pace at times of say a band like Ten Years After. Once again the band give out another lesson in how to do intense jamming. Suicide- The title track is a hard rocker with a truly Black Sabbath feel or even a future Blue Oyster Cult effort, it’s dark, sombre and has those horror flick vocals, it must’ve inspired a whole load of future extreme metal vocalists on listening to this. But the real highlight of the song is that middle to late section highlighted by its heavy jamming section where all the components of the band are in complete unison.

Verdict
Suicide is a multi-faceted album and it sits as a perfect pair with the debut album, as two highly accomplished eclectic efforts. The album contains numerous classic Del Bromham licks and the pulsating bass of Gary Giles, which at times is reminiscent of Geezer Butler. Few bands at the time were capable of fusing so many styles as well as Stray. Throughout the album the listener can hear hard rock, heavy metal, lazy easy listening rock, ballads, southern rock and jazz-fusion. The band seemed to do justice to any style they took a fancy to (rather like the Beatles) and not always an easy thing to do. Bearing all this in mind, I really think the band’s eclectic hard rock feel along with peaking too early in their career, may have been their undoing concerning a commercial breakthrough with their first two albums. This was a factor which would resign the band as stalwart support and an opening act for other bands, often these bands didn’t get anywhere near the natural talent of Stray, but rock 'n' roll is littered with such stories! The lack of success with the Suicide album, would finally push the band into more experimental territory for their third album Saturday Morning Pictures, where like Lucifer’s Friend before them, they would try to steer into a more proggy direction and the hope of achieving more commercial success. It often seemed that progressive bands could usually embrace hard rock far better than hard rock bands could actually embrace progressive rock, just an observation of mine and not necessarily fact. Future Stray releases would see greater keyboard and synthesizer tinkering compared to their earlier efforts. And as they say, it would be tits up for the band throughout the rest of the decade, as the band really steered themselves into some really questionably bad musical directions. The band remain as one the great British bands of their generation, that sadly didn’t get the plaudits that their talent deserved.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Trollheart

Ah. Shows how much I know, doesn't it?

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Unknown Soldier

Overview
On Love it to Death the Alice Cooper band had found their true calling and would further consolidate this calling on Killer its follow-up album, which was also released the same year (the preceding Love it to Death features even higher on this 1971 list) Killer would be the album that would launch Alice Cooper into the big league and is considered by many as one of his greatest works. The band would quickly gain notoriety first in their native USA and then later in the UK, for their so called shocking theatrical stage shows, that’s certainly exaggerated by today’s standards, but this was the early 1970s here and people just weren’t used to this type of thing! What most people never realized though, was that the Alice Cooper band were not really the shocking miscreants that they had been labelled, they were basically just artists, who were interested in perfecting a high quality theatrical stage show, to match the music that they wanted to put out. Vincent Furnier (Alice Cooper) stated that the band were just into beer, sex, death, money and just having a good time, and I believe him! In the early days, the band were often booed off stage and Vincent Furnier even got a cream pie in his face!!! Initially their stage act just didn’t go down in LA, prompting the band to go to Detroit Vincent Furnier’s hometown, which with its motor city madness was home to the likes of The Stooges and MC5, so Detroit was used to being shocked! When it came to shock-rock, Alice Cooper in almost every aspect from both their music and stage show, rank as an original, only Arthur Brown and his band The Crazy World of Arthur Brown predates him (just) But Arthur Brown basically just turned out as a one-shot artist that failed to capitalize on his debut album. Alice Cooper though, quickly evolved their stage show and by the time of their third and fourth albums, it was already honed to perfection. The stage show included all types of ghoulish macabre, electric chairs, boa constrictors, straight-jackets, mangled baby dolls and simulated hangings……nice! Alice Cooper were so good at what they did, that the only other band that could match them in terms of quality especially on the stage show in the 1970s were the Tubes, who along with Alice Cooper were a completely misunderstood band, that also received a lot of unnecessary flak. On Killer the first of two Alice Cooper albums to make this list, the definition of the band’s trashy, violent but often humorous sound is very much in evidence.

Vincent Furnier- Vocals
Glen Buxton- Guitar
Michael Bruce- Rhythm/Keyboards
Dennis Dunaway- Bass
Neal Smith- Drums
Bob Ezrin- Keyboards

Production- Bob Ezrin

Album
Under My Wheels- A signature Alice Cooper song, a great intro with its fast paced good old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll approach. Be My Lover- More tongue-in-cheek humour from Alice Cooper. Halo of Flies- Another early lengthy band track, that is probably even more diverse than the longer songs on Love it to Death. The song is highlighted by its Spanish style rhythm section and its galloping interludes, before Alice Cooper moves into an eastern influenced section and then the song gradually moves into its raging crescendo. Desperado- A slick sounding ballad/chorus number, that possibly ranks as Alice Cooper’s best song from his early period. It’s so slickly sung and this song is so Vincent Furnier, it just couldn’t be anybody else, this is basically the unofficial title track in all but name. You Drive me Nervous- Not one one of the strongest tracks on the album, but that’s not to say it’s bad either. Yeah Yeah Yeah- Like the previous “You Drive Me Nervous” the album hits its second weaker track in a row, this is humorous filler and the harmonica section is the highlight of the song. Dead Babies- The undoubted saviour of side-two of the album, with its slow moving and atmospheric intro (almost Pink Floyd in feel at times) before the song trips into more familiar Alice Cooper territory. Killer- The title track has a different vibe in regards to the rest of the album and feels at times more like a jamming track than a your typical Alice Cooper track, before the song finishes itself with various experimental sounding sections and outros.

Verdict
In many ways Killer is a more compact album than Love it to Death, but probably not as interesting and eclectic as the preceding release. Killer is without doubt an album of consolidation after the band’s commercial breakthrough and in songs of the calibre of “Under My Wheels” “Be My Lover” and the outstanding “Desperado” the band easily achieve their aim here, of putting out short and catchy numbers. But that’s not to say that the more interesting side of the band’s music is not represented though, because in “Halo of Flies” and “Dead Babies” the band show that they do the longer material just as well yet again and like the previous album, the compositions are again all co-band efforts throughout and this time without any cover tracks. It is these aspects in my mind, that makes these two Bob Ezrin produced albums such essential listens for 1971, with their perfect combination of a band doing both catchy commercial tracks with great comical touches and then effortlessly drifting into more psychedelic territory with subtle experimental touches, and then the whole thing being melded together by Vincent Furnier’s sleazy and potent vocals. Killer as an album, may well rank as Alice Cooper’s most humorous release with its tongue-in cheek humour, all deliciously wrapped around recognizable catchy songs, full of Alice Cooper fanfare. Alice Cooper with their brand of hard rock would not only be influential of future acts, most notably from the glam rock and glam metal movements, but his elaborate stage show would go on to set new boundries in theatrical shock-rock as well. The following year, The Cooper’s would put out their true signature song in the single “School’s Out” which needs no introduction to anybody with an interest in rock music, it’s one of the most famous singles of the 1970s! Its accompanying album would be a concept album, which wouldn’t have the quality of either Love it To Death or Killer, but it was the album that made him a household name.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Unknown Soldier

Overview
Throughout the history of rock, the name Alice Cooper has always conjured up images of shock-rock, heavy theatricals with stage props, all enveloped around horror themes. Indeed few artists can boast the level of musical consistency, that Alice Cooper (Vincent Furnier) has put out for over four decades now. It should also be noted and contrary to popular belief, Alice Cooper was initially the name of both the band and Vincent Furnier and not just of the man now known as Alice Cooper! Before the actual Alice Cooper band came into effect, Vincent Furnier the son of a preacher…. how appropriate! Had been part of several bands in and around the Phoenix area, along with fellow miscreants Glen Buxton-Guitar, Michael Bruce-Rhythm/Keyboards, Dennis Dunaway-Bass and Neal Smith-Drums who would later go onto form Alice Cooper with him. The Coopers played under different guises in and around Phoenix, Los Angeles and eventually Vincent Furnier’s hometown Detroit and were eventually signed up to Frank Zappa’s Straight Records before going onto Warner Bros. Pretties For You and Easy Action the Alice Cooper band’s first two albums were effectively psychedelic/acid rock affairs and a far cry from the hard rock direction that they would take by the time of their third album Love it to Death. Pretties For You was an interesting album but it failed to convince, Easy Action was a far better album and had some excellent material, none more so than its closing track “Lay Down and Die, Goodbye” but you still felt that the band lacked focus with their sound and stage show. Enter legendary producer Bob Ezrin, who took on production duties for the band’s third album and even played keyboards on it! Bob Ezrin reshaped the Cooper’s sound and cleaned it up, by shaping it into a grittier hard rock sound infused with a heavy dosage of rock ‘n’ roll, that was all based around raw and simple riffs, catchy songs and most importantly, the music now matched the band’s stage show! The band to keep things interesting, would also venture back to their original psychedelic roots especially on their longer material. Love it to Death would be the album that started the band’s classic phase, so listen to it and enjoy!

Vincent Furnier- Vocals
Glen Buxton- Guitar
Michael Bruce- Rhythm/Keyboards
Dennis Dunaway- Bass
Neal Smith- Drums
Bob Ezrin- Keyboards

Production- Bob Ezrin

Album
Caught in a Dream- Just after a few beats, this is the perfect example of Alice Cooper’s revved up rock ‘n’ roll combined with their garage rock roots. I’m Eighteen- The big hit from the album and an early Alice Cooper classic. In fact this is such a classic song with great lyrics and great vocals by Vincent Furnier, that he lays down his singing blueprint for the rest of the decade. Long Way to Go- An early power display by the band and a great album track and is the perfect third song on any album. Black Juju- Another classic composition which really demonstrates the musical ability of the band over an impressive 9 minutes. Just hearing Alice Cooper sing ‘bodieeees’ combined with his hypnotic spoken section later on, reminds us of the band’s psychedelic roots and Vincent Furnier’s cryptic singing. The song also has a great outro section along with some great playing by the rest of the band, finally culminating in “BLACK JUJU” Is it My Body- More revved up rock ‘n’ roll here and similar in style to “I’m Eighteen” quite simiply another early Alice Cooper gem. Hallowed Be My Name- A great 2 minute plus ditty by Alice Cooper, superbly sung, with a song style that Alice Cooper had no trouble mustering. Second Coming- A great intro to the following song with its ballad type opening section, quickly followed by a Beatles sounding section, before the instrumentals kick in with their piano outro and the song leads into the following “Ballad of Dwight Fry” Ballad of Dwight Fry- The showpiece track on the album, with its child spoken intro, with the child asking where his ‘daddy has gone’ and the song has an eerie feel throughout. The whole thing sounds like some kind of macabre fairground soundtrack, as the band base the track around the superb supporting horror actor of the 1930s Dwight Fyre, the song has been covered by the Melvins. Sun Arise- A cover song of the Rolf Harris original, that seems like a very strange choice but surprisingly it fits in well here. Personally I would have put “Black Juju” as the album closer here though.

Verdict
Love it to Death was the breakthrough album of the band and it was an interesting mix of musical styles, that could conveniently fall under the hard rock banner. The album is blessed with some very catchy songs, that are superbly blended in with the longer material and that is what makes this album great. The shorter classics like the anthemic “I’m Eighteen” and the humorous “Is it My Body” contrast so well with the much longer Doors-esque psychedelic classics such as ”“Black Juju” and the “Ballad of Dwight Fry”. Tracks like “Long Way to Go” add some real gusto to proceedings as well, but what is most noticeable albeit in a very subtle way, was Vincent Furnier’s ability to sound quite sensitive regardless of the subject matter, the perfect example of this is at the beginning of “Second Coming” where he demonstrates this ability. The album was also a real band effort, as most of the material is either co-written by the band or individually written by a band member. I often sing this album’s praises but I still wouldn’t call it a classic, the ideas and songs in general are there, but you still feel that the final execution could’ve been even better had the band paid more attention to what was going on concerning song structure and song order, but putting all that aside this is still an essential release and a must listen to album for any aficionado. Not only did the album usher in a new important musical act, but it also put Detroit at the forefront, as one of the ‘musical centres’ of the US rock music scene, already highlighted by the Stooges and MC5. The album cover at the time also caused something of a stir, as those with good eyes can notice Vincent Furnier’s hand down his trousers, with his finger poking out in an effort to duplicate a penis.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Blarobbarg

I freaking love Alice Cooper, he's always been one of my favorites. I love his early albums, too, so seeing them on this list made my day.

Have you heard any of his recent albums? He wasn't doing well for awhile, but his most recent album, Welcome 2 My Nightmare has him (mostly) back in form. I'm hoping it's a sign of greater things to come.

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Unknown Soldier

Glad you liked the reviews. I've heard all his recent albums barring Welcome 2 My Nightmare, but I know it's regarded as his best album in decades!

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Unknown Soldier

Album Pick of the Year

Overview
The Flower Travellin’ Band have already been mentioned in my “Also Check This Out……” section for 1970 and their debut album (a covers album) caused something of a stir, for both the band’s take on their chosen cover songs and also on the band appearing naked on motorbikes on the album cover. So when the band finally got around to recording their second album and their first of original material, it turned out to be something quite sensational! Here was a hard rock band from Japan, that sounded like Led Zeppelin meets King Crimson meets Blue Cheer all in a strange kind of way, does this sound confusing? If not it should! They then added their unique Japanese slant to the whole thing and usually sounded out of their heads as well. The band based their unique sound, around a spaced-out blues hard rock sound full of heavy guitar riffs and drumbeats. The band themselves had originally formed in the late 1960s as the Flowers and again their material was mostly covers and after various personnel changes, which saw the arrival of legendary vocalist Joe Yamanaka the line-up was complete. I say legendary, because his vocal style was unique and along with Damo Suzuki of Can, they were two Japanese vocalists of amazing talent. On their debut album Anywhere, the band’s take on classic contemporary heavy tracks such as “Twentieth Century Schizoid Man” and “Black Sabbath” along with classic blues and blues rock numbers, showed that the band had considerable talent available to them in abundance. Satori was recorded in April 1971 and would be the band’s first original album. Satori would also be a groundbreaking album of its type and also totally unique with its almost hypnotic feel. I could’ve put this album in one of my add-on sections, but I always felt that despite the heavy proggy style elements, that this band were a hard rock band in soul. It just happened that this soul had been corrupted and led them to indulge in a trippy almost totally spaced-out brand of hard rock, making this album completely different to anything already featured on my top ten lists. As a footnote, the album didn’t get a North American release until 1988 and checking around on how influential this band were, it’s amazing how many other bands have covered their stuff over the years, ranging from modern day post-rock, hardcore, thrash and progressive bands!

Joe Yamanaka- Vocals
Hideki Ishima- Guitar
Jon Kuzuki- Bass
Joji ‘George’ Wada- Drums

Production- Okuzo Orita

Album
Satori Pt.1- Starts off with some high pitched whining and the jingling of bells before a cry and bursting into a King Crimson style beat, before the whole thing jumps again into a to and fro between the KC beat and a serious up-tempo kick-butt riff. These two contrasting aspects dominate the whole song and are highlighted by Yamanaka’s wailing cry. Satori Pt.2- More laid back in essence than the opening track and here vocalist Yamanaka sings ‘the sun shines everyday etc.’ and it’s almost like the guitars are singing along with him, before the whole song emerges into an lengthy intense instrumental. Satori Pt.3- With its subdued intro before jumping up a volume notch, the song now has that distinctive Eastern sound unique to the band and heavily pierced by a guitar. This 10 minute song then enters a more familiar blues based section, before switching to more experimental flavours and then into its galloping final section. Satori Pt.4- One of the best tracks on the album and also the longest. The groovy intro to this song alone wins it and Yamanaka actually makes more of an attempt to sing here as well, and comes across a la Hendrix against the backdrop of that thumping beat! The band show their love of American blues with the harmonica and this is definitely the most blues based track on the album. Satori Pt.5- With its more menacing feel, this song is the perfect finale to the whole Satori album offering and yet again Yamanaka doesn’t actually need to sing, his constant wailing and Hideki Ishima’s guitar licks are enough to satisfy, before the whole thing bows out Japanese style.

Verdict
Basically the album sounds like one big fucked up acid trip, with some bluesy bits where the band mellow out a bit, and when Joe Yamanaka manages to sing, he sounds totally out of it as always. The album in many ways, is kind of a final twisted sounding goodbye to the ‘flower power brigade’ of the 1960s and all its trappings! This is a band that have meshed a whole load of eclectic sounds and styles from their own Eastern Japanese perspective, by using western musical traits and then infusing their own unique identity into these songs as well. But what keeps this album balanced and relatively easy on the ear, is that the whole thing is constantly underpinned with simplistic but dominant hard rock riffs! I would say to any heavy metal or hard rock fan out there, that likes his/her music straight-up and solid sounding, to probably give this a wide berth. But if hard rock with instrumentals and a trippy psychedelic slant are your thing then dive right in, as this is a forgotten classic, that easily gives over to repeated listens as it’s that good! The album was immediately seen as important in its native Japan, but was only destined to become a cult classic in the main musical centres of North America and the UK, but its fame has grown over the years. The King Crimson “Twentieth Century Schizoid Man” influence seems to pop up all around this album, more so than some of the Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin comparisons that were laid at their door around this time. These bands can of course be heard from time to time, but are quickly forgotten in the grand scheme of things once the Flower Travellin’ Band get going, I find it amazing, that the band managed to include their frenetic intense sound in an album that lasts just 32 minutes! (I guess Slayer took note of this for Reign in Blood!) This album is so good, that Joe Yamanaka doesn’t even need to sing that much to impress us, his constant wailing like some demented Samurai warrior is enough to keep the listener interested throughout. After this album, the band would be invited to Canada to record the excellent Made in Japan album the following year (will be on my 1972 list for sure) But they would never quite do anything as unique as Satori ever again.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Unknown Soldier

Overview
I’ve often spoken about how unpopular ‘heavy bands’ were with music critics on both sides of the Atlantic at this time, with plenty of criticism and flak always flying around, but it seems that Uriah Heep came in for even more flak than normal! They were initially prime targets of the UK music press when it came to negative criticism and one reviewer even wrote “If this group makes it, I'll have to commit suicide” “From the first note, you know you don't want to hear any more." To other opinions which labelled the band as a poor man’s Led Zeppelin or Led Zeppelin plagiarists. As always these criticisms were way-off and the Led Zeppelin comparison showed just how little music reviewers understood ‘heavy music’ at this time! If they had, they would’ve known that Uriah Heep were a progressive rock influenced band, whose organ driven sound, had been influenced by the likes of Deep Purple, Iron Butterfly, Spooky Tooth and Vanilla Fudge, making the Led Zeppelin comparisons quite redundant. The band were immediately blessed with talented individuals in lead vocalist David Byron, whose vocal talents with their eccentric feel and high-pitched warblings, put him up on a level with the top vocalists of the time. Mike Box on guitar was a capable shredder of real talent, but the real creative element of the band was keyboardist Ken Hensley, whose rampaging organ was the cornerstone of the band’s sound and he was also the bands principal writer. Bassist Paul Newton would only feature on the band’s first three albums, but the real problem area for the band was always the drum stool, by their third album the band were already on their third drummer in Ian Clarke. Personnel changes would eventually be the scourge of the band as the years went by. Uriah Heep’s debut album ...Very ‘eavy...Very ‘umble, had mostly been a collection of great musical ideas rather than one cohesive effort. On the one hand, the album had contained early Uriah Heep gems such as “Gypsy” “Walking in Your Shadow” and the ballad “Come Away Melinda” songs worthy of any great album believe me! But on the other hand, the album had been let down by the band’s proggy experimentation and self-indulgent tendencies. For their sophomore set Salisbury, the band had steered in a more cohesive proggy direction and still with hard rock overtones, this was the direction the band wanted. Salisbury in my opinion, can be seen as an album where the band took a step backward in order to move forward and again it has some stellar tracks in “Bird of Prey” and “Lady in Black”. The whole album though, was ultimately let down by its sixteen minute title track that dominates side-two of the album, the song was just too unfocused to ever be seen as a lengthy heavy progressive classic, especially since lengthy progressive classics could be found aplenty at this time. So with all these factors littering their first two albums, how would the band fare on their third release Look at Yourself?

David Byron- Vocals
Mick Box- Guitar,
Paul Newton- Bass
Ken Hensley- Keyboards/Organ
Ian Clarke- Drums

Production- Gerry Bron

Album
Look at Yourself- The perfect lead out track with its galloping intro all high on energy, as the band waste no time in laying down the foundations of the album on its title track. I think this song is a great example of the band showing their musical prowess. I Wanna Be Free- A softer song based around a more ordered song structure, but beefed up with some heavy instrumentation and climaxing with a powerful workout. July Morning- The showpiece track of the album and it’s 10 minutes of pure progression, beauty and extensive playing. It starts off with pastoral organ, an acoustic section before the Moog synthesizer starts to dominate. It’s basically the track that “Salisbury” never was from their previous album. David Byron at times sounds sensational here and truly cements his place as one of the great vocalists of his generation. Also features a stand-in by Manfred Mann on synthesizer. Tears in My Eyes- starts off with a great Mick Box riff, this is a song that the band could’ve easily stretched out to 10 minutes, but the band have gone for a condensed feel here and it’s the song of a band firing on all cylinders. Shadows of Grief- As far as I’m concerned the best song on the album and might be the best song they ever put out. This is 8 minutes of galloping energy and it’s Uriah Heep at their very best. The song dips in its middle section and slows down, before kicking into life once again and then shifts into more experimental territory, Ken Hensley is outstanding once again! What Should Be Done- The most subdued track on the album and a song that needs to be dominated by the vocalist, which it is. Love Machine- A punchy song where Uriah Heep sound like Deep Purple here, or do Deep Purple sound like Uriah Heep! It’s just a matter of opinion really.

Verdict
This is a basically a rip-roaring pearl of an album, full of stellar tracks and excellent instrumentation, combined with very strong songs throughout. A lot of this praise needs to be laid at the door of the band’s creative element Ken Hensley, who on Look at Yourself has finally taken the band by the scruff of its neck and drummed out a cohesive classic of an album, that is all highlighted by his swirling playing style. This was an album that the band had always promised to do but had never delivered on until now. At times this album is a real high energy work-out, that gives over to progressive and experimental sections, but it never ever goes into pure jamming territory (always a dodgy area for some bands) So how does Look at Yourself rank in the Uriah Heep discography? Well the album is the perfect fusion of hard rock and progressive rock, with neither musical genre overly dominating the other. In fact a song like “Tears in My Eyes” with its condensed feel, almost sounds like an early pomp-rock example and the album’s epic “July Morning” may well rank as one of the most important hard rock progressive tracks ever written and even rivals the brilliance of Deep Purple’s “Child in Time”. This album along with its follow-up album Demons and Wizards, are seen as Uriah Heep’s finest ever achievements and both albums normally split Uriah Heep fans as to which is the best of the two! Look at Yourself is blessed by fantastic musicians, of which Ken Hensley probably takes the prize as being the tightest of them all, but the real factor on this album is surely David Byron’s voice. I’ve ranked his voice right up there with the best, but unlike say Ian Gillan David Byron’s voice really is an acquired taste and does have its detractors. His high-pitched multi-octave warblings are not going to be to everybody’s taste and indeed at times I even find his voice can be over exaggerated, when a more simplistic approach may well have been better. That aside though, he was a great talent that eventually succumbed to his abuses and it’s no surprise that the likes of Rob Halford were greatly influenced by him. Look at Yourself is worthy of its number three position on this list and it’s an album of great cohesion and delivery, that really needs several listens to really appreciate its depth and flowing consistency.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History