Greek tragedy set to music, rock opera, call it what you will, Ken (
Uriah Heep) Hensley's autobiographical long player tells the story of
Uriah Heep and his post Heep solo work with songs full of energy, emotion, extreme highs and debilitating lows.
Hensley's dressed his songs in seventies' style arrangements and brought in guest vocalists John Lawton,
Glenn Hughes and
Jorn Lande (in Coverdale mode) to lend an additional air of authenticity.
Each of the fourteen tracks represents a chapter on the band's journey to world domination and beyond.
Starting out with the youthful optimism and enthusiasm of '
Just The Beginning' (sung by Lande)and
'We're On Our Way' (sung by Hensley), working its way through the sucesses and the excesses and the drug related casualties, '
Blood On The Highway' (sung by Lande
), to the point when that same world went spinning out from under them, '
Okay This House Is Down' (Lande on vocals
).
Cleverly, Hensley occasionally uses linking spoken commentary to help maintain the storyline. Ominously titled '
Doom (Scene 1)' and '
Doom (Scene 2), these point to an immense ego getting in the way of reality, undermining the band and eventually leading to Hensely's departure.
Much soul searching took place in the aftermath, sensitively and tunefully revealed in
the cold blast of '
What You Gonna Do' (Hughes on vocals) and the climactic, ultimately uplifting '
I Did It All', which fittingly, Hensley sings himself.
The only blight is the overblown closing track, '
The Last Dance' (sung by Hughes) which sits in contrast to the measured approach taken by Hensley on the rest of the album.
Obviously each of the songs has an integral part to play in chronicling events, but most can easily stand up on their own.
John (
Uriah Heep) Lawton's '
It Won't Last' is an absolute killer cut, Lande storms through
'Okay, This House Is Down' and '
We're On Our Way' is a North London take on swaggering Southern rock.
But probably the most affecting track here is the 20 second ode to absent friends
'Postscript'. "Started out in London such a long time ago, some of them didn't make it back, where they are now I don't know".
Says it all, really.
Written by
Brian Monday, July 2, 2007
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