They did have their share of fantastical metal songs too, though ("Rainbow Demon", "Pilgrim", "Magician's Birthday"). Generally their most explicitly fantastical songs ("The Wizard", "Lady in Black") were softer, folksier ones. Heavy Mithril: Their early 70s' catalogue has plenty of this.
Gratuitous Panning: The mixing on Very 'Eavy pans all instruments to either the left or right channel in most songs.Glass-Shattering Sound: The late, great David Byron had an incredibly powerful falsetto, as heard among other places on "Sunrise" from The Magician's Birthday.For Doom the Bell Tolls: The ominous opening to "Rainbow Demon".One of their most popular songs, "July Morning", is another good example. Epic Rocking: The second side of Salisbury is occupied by a 16-minute long suite featuring a twenty-six piece orchestra.The album is also mixed very differently from their later work (see Gratuitous Panning below). Once Hensley took on main songwriting duties, the following string of albums have a much more coherent sound. Early Installment Weirdness: Their debut album is a grab-bag of various sub-genres of rock, mostly because Ken Hensley joined the band after the material was written.Demoted to Extra: In spite of their popularity and influence, Uriah Heep is less well remembered than other early metal groups, though they probably have more recognition in prog rock circles.Cool Old Guy: Three of the five band members are over 60 as of September 2020.Control Freak: Ken Hensley, the band's keyboardist, second guitarist and primary songwriter during the first part of their career, developed a reputation for iron-handed control over the group.Based on a Dream: According to Ken Hensley, "The Wizard" was based on a dream he had every night for a week, and as soon as he wrote the lyrics on paper, he stopped having it.An Aesop: "Lady In Black" ends with the message that evil cannot overcome evil.Ambiguously Human: It's not clear if the "lady in black" in the song of the same name is a human or some kind of divine being, though her wisdom and appearing to the narrator in his hour of greatest need would suggest the latter."Stealin' when I should have been tropin'": Totally Driven (2015) note More re-recordings of older songs.Celebration (2009) note Mostly re-recordings of earlier hits, with two new songs.Bassist Gary Thain and drummer Lee Kerslake completed the "classic" line-up that played on the Demons and Wizards and The Magician's Birthday albums. The third member of the core of Uriah Heep was Ken Hensley, who contributed keyboards, some guitar and most of the songwriting. The nucleus of the original group was David Byron, a singer with an operatic voice and multi-octave vocal range and lead guitarist Mick Box, both of whom had played in a psychedelic group called Spice in the sixties. They stand out from their early 70s contemporaries by their deeper progressive stylings, a taste for the psychedelic and fantastical, and the very heavy presence of the Hammond organ (to an even greater extent than Deep Purple). They are considered one of the first Heavy Metal bands, with their initial albums released neck-to-neck with the foundational metal records of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. Uriah Heep are a British Progressive Rock band whose debut was released in 1970 and are still active today.
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