Uriah Heep – Demons and Wizards (1972)

Another beautiful vinyl album from my father's record collection. As I've mentioned many times before, my father was a fan of progressive rock and heavy metal in the early 70's. When my friends became interested in Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple in school, I was happy to find some of these albums from my dad's collection. Uriah Heep was a band that wasn't as well known from that genre. It had obviously been really popular in the 70's but it had not lasted the time as well as the other bands. I really liked Uriah Heep's pop-melodies and sounds. For a while it was one of my favourite bands. Ken Hensley's keyboards and Mick Box's guitars were amazingly skilfully played and some of their solos were my favourite solos by any band when I was a teenager. Of course David Byron's high vocals are impressive as well.



My father even had, on a piece of paper, the autographs for the whole of Uriah Heep that he had gotten from the band at Ruisrock, one of Finland's legendary music festivals. This kind of item was very impressive to me as a teenager. This was unfortunately the only vinyl album from the band that my father had. I myself was even more impressed by the band's second album Salisbury, which to this day, I think is their best album. Demons and Wizards has some good songs on it as well though and the gatefold sleeve is a beautiful piece of art.

The album starts with a folky rock song The Wizard. It's one of my favourite songs on the album. I really like the acoustic sounds of the guitar. The vocals are perhaps a bit over the top for this type of song, but I guess it was the trademark style of hard rock bands of the time to sing loud. Traveller In Time turns the volume knobs up and brings in some harder tones. Then again, after the rocky intro, there are some excellent soft psychedelic verses. The bass lines are beautiful in this one. Easy Livin' is one of Uriah Heep's biggest hits. It's likely that this is the only song people normally know from them. I can see why the catchy melodies and raunchy rock sounds have made it so successful. Poet's Justice showcases Byron's falsettos right from the beginning. The chorus is very beautiful and gives depth to the song after quite repetitive and slightly boring verse. Circle of Hands has Hensley's trademark Hammond's in a big role. It's a great song in terms of songwriting as well. Rainbow Demon is probably the heaviest song on the album. It reminds me of Deep Purple quite a lot. There's also some interesting whispering mystique to the song. All My Life brings back the more straightforward rock sounds. There's quite a nice groove in the guitars. Paradise has some great hypnotising folk guitars and psychedelic slow melodies. The soft bass lines also sound amazing. The album ends with The Spell, which is the longest song on the album and thus it has most room for different parts and styles. The song has some phenomenal guitar solos that sound quite a lot like Pink Floyd.

There's even a music video for The Wizard. It's basically just a live video with the album version being played on top. People in this video look amazingly ridiculous. Especially the moustache on David Byron is quite epic. Also the dance moves in the audience look hilarious from today's perspective. Also, there's nothing like leopard-style spandex flares to set the mood for some 70's heavy metal.

I don't regularly listen to Uriah Heep anymore, but they have been a very important part of my personal music history. This band is filled with amazing talent. you can hardly hear solos like this anymore and even if the sounds are perhaps a bit classier in today's music, I sometimes long for amazing music heroes that showed what true skill is in rock music.

Listen to the album on Spotify.