Customer Reviews

Head First

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The second album with the lineup of Peter Goalby (v), Mick Box (g), John Sinclair (k), Bob Daisley (b) and Lee Kerslake (d) again found the band attempting to claw its way into the 1983 AOR mix that was dominating FM radio stations. The 15th studio album reached #159 on the U.S. chart, which describes the mixed bag in the 10 original tracks - this release is bolstered by three bonus cuts - that clocked in at 37:21.

A pair of solid numbers - Other Side of Midnight and Weekend Warriors - bookend the single, Stay on Top, and an interesting cover of a 1981 Bryan Adams song, Lonely Nights. The progressive rock instrumental Roll-Overture dips back to the early years of the group, but at 2:18 is fading out before it can get rolling, while numbers like Straight Through the Heart, Love is Blind and Sweet Talk strain at trying to be too radio friendly. Red Lights and Rollin' the Rock scamper away from being too formalistic, which is a plus.

Seven of the 10 songs were written by band members, which demonstrated a stability that had been missing for some time. Former bassist Trevor Bolder would replace Daisley for the tour to promote the album, which marked the only lineup change for several more years. But disappointing sale figures found Uriah Heep being dropped by the label.

Uriah Heep made their name in the 70s as a heavy rock band with prog tendencies. After their first 3 albums, the "heavy" side tended to give way to various softer 70s-sounding material, and the prog tendencies to more poppy ones. In the early 80s, the whole lineup broke up, leaving guitarist Mick Box to reform the band, with returning longtime drummer Lee Kerslake. The resulting album, "Abominog", thus had a very different sound, but it's combination of hard guitar-rock with classic organ was probably as faithful to the Uriah Heep legacy as most 70s bands sounded in the 80s. Either way, it was a pretty good rock album and is considered a highpoint of the band's career.
This album follows up with the same lineup, and the same very-80s rock sound. The main difference is the keyboards tend to have more of an 80s sound than the organ sounds used on "Abominog". While "Abominog" did have a couple of really stand-out tracks ("Too Scared to Run" comes to mind) that puts it above "Head First", otherwise this album's probably about equal in quality (in fact, it has a few less songs by outside songwriters). As another reviewer pointed out, it also has a pretty cool, if short, instrumental ("Roll-overture") that gives a not to their proggy early days.
Overall, then, this is a good 80s rock album - not quite metal, but pretty rockin', and nothing particularly original or outstanding, but pretty good. If you want to check out 80s Heep, I'd recommend Abominog first, but if you like that you should like this. (And, Equator, the follow-up, gets a bad rap but is pretty much just a continuation of these two - not quite as good, but close enough).