High and Mighty [Remaster]

Performer: Uriah Heep
Engineer: Peter Gallen; Ashley Howe
Distributor: Ryko Distribution

Notes: Uriah Heep includes: David Byron (vocals); Mick Box (guitar, background vocals); Ken Hensley (keyboards); John Wetton (bass, background vocals); Lee Keslake (drums). Producer: Uriah Heep. Reissue producer: Mick Carpenter. Recorded at Roundhouse Studios, London, England between December 1975 & March 1976. Includes liner notes by Robert M. Corich. All tracks have been digitally remastered. 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 tension is visibly apparent on High and Mighty, an album that shows flashes of the group's old firepower, but is ultimately sunk by a combination of unfocused experimentation and uneven songwriting. It starts promisingly with a solid first side: "One Way or Another" is a surging, dramatic hard rocker that features Ken Hensley trading verses with bassist John Wetton, and "Misty Eyes" is an engaging up-tempo tune that trades the group's hard rock thunder for a sound built on some tasty acoustic guitar riffs. It also contains one of the group's finest songs in "Midnight," a meditation on the price of success that neatly balances Mick Box's soaring guitar leads with an array of lush keyboard textures from Ken Hensley. This song is also notable for the dramatic, heart-wrenching vocal it is given by David Byron. However, High and Mighty fails to maintain this standard of quality on its second side. Several of the songs find the band flirting with pop elements in a way that doesn't complement their hard rocking style: "Can't Stop Singing" starts curiously with "Monty Python"-style mock tribal chants before devolving into a silly keyboard pop tune, and the hard rock energy of "Woman of the World" is sunk by the ridiculously bouncy beat and English music hall-style piano it is saddled with. The second side also sports a surprisingly lame and derivative rocker in "Make a Little Love," a throwaway that sounds like an uninspired attempt to duplicate the sound of Bad Company. All in all, High and Mighty is far too uneven to win Uriah Heep any new fans, but it contains enough solid rockers to make it worth a listen for the group's devoted ones. ~ Donald A. Guarisco

Despite a Spinal Tap-like inability to secure a drummer, British band Uriah Heep has continued to roll with the punches since 1969. Their eclectic approach to rock folds Tolkeinian dragons-and-dwarves imagery into grand musical themes that draw on prog, metal, acid rock, and pastoral folk. The band were fairly popular in the U.K. in the '70s, and their albums charted respectably in the U.S. during this time as well. As the musical landscape shifted in the later '70s, the band's popularity died down, but they have continued to release albums (their live discography is rather lengthy) and tour, and remain popular in Eastern Europe and Japan.

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