Member:
Chuck AzEee!
(Profile)
(All Album Reviews by Chuck AzEee!)
Date:
5/4/2003
Format:
CD (Album)
Arguably on the greatest albums of the Seventies, Uriah Heep's Demons And Wizards was the artier counterbalance to their virtuostic cousins, Deep Purple and much more concise then Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. But despite the praise, metal bands of the Seventies rarely if ever got any good reviews with the press, and being that Uriah Heep was a combination of what later groups, Queensryche and King's X would later be christened "progressive metal", they were doublely cursed as for their long winded theatrics would prove to doom the band as they were about to take flight.
The band's fourth album Demons And Wizards is an opus amongst both metal and progressive rock enthusiasts, as for lead singer David Byron with the exception of Ian Gillian, may have had the best set of pipes of all of the metal singers, backed with the most innovative of the Heep line-ups: Mick Box on guitar, Ken Henseley on keyboards/guitar, bass phenom Gary Thain and drummer Lee Kerkslake, which might not have had Deep Purples chops, but proved to be as influential in the long run. Like most of the great progressive rock bands of the time, Uriah Heep on their fourth album struck gold as for the band's mystical lyrics were now put to musicians that drove the music to Sabbath like dirge to Tull induced power ballads.
From beginning to end, Demons and Wizards is a FIVE STAR classic, with no weal song amongst its set, the best being the album's epic closer "Paradise/The Spell" which ranks with the best not only within the metal world but prog as well.
Charles
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