![]() Lady in Black really hit hard in Northern Europe, one of the major hits back during this time. All of this goodness comes with some pretty good keyboarding to boot, and – for the time – really progressive drum work. But not at that level of red-hot intensity. Okay, we already enjoyed some rare falsetto shenanigans from David Byron earlier. And also to the later ones like the famous Demons and Wizards or Firefly. The change in style is drastic compared to their first album. The whole start to Salisbury pretty much comes as a shock. Which just adds to this overall delicious weirdness. The ballad The Park, all full of birdie sounds, and sweet, soft music, will greet you next. And I tell ya, the track is so funky that it kinda glues you to your earphones.īut there’s more falsetto for you. Some sort of an early metal scream before this even became an idea. Furiously fast, until those weird falsetto voices emerge, the mother of all nut-crunchers. First, Bird of Prey speeds away with a strange mix of Hard Rock and early Heavy Metal. This is the first impression you get when the album takes off. Let there be sound on the Salisbury plains, and it was rather strange! So here we got the stage set against an almighty competition that was the emerging Progressive and Hard Rock scene. And Black Sabbath got rid of Master of Reality, another good’un. This was also the year that Led Zeppelin unleashed Led Zeppelin IV 2). ![]() So, this review will focus on the European version.Īnd let’s think back to 1971 for a moment: Jethro Tull just released their ultimate career booster Aqualung 1). The different and truly boring cover and a slightly edited track selection – a failure in my view – did not quite cut it with the crew over here. Unfortunately, the US version of Salisbury was somewhat different and not to my taste. Which was at that time, and still is today, a military playground in the good old United Kingdom. Now, Salisbury would only be half-finished without this trademark orange cover with a Chieftain tank supposedly driving through the Salisbury Plains. Something that wasn’t yet quite common back in the early ’70s. And who would have thought that this would turn out to be one of the most controversial and inspiring albums Uriah Heep would ever produce. To be completely honest, even for us nerdy people this new style was a bit difficult to digest. Germany came in at rank 31, whereas the reception was a bit mixed in the United States. The land of the future metal scene of the ominous kind. On the other hand, Salisbury charted at # 1 in Finland. The comments the band had to endure at that time were pretty bad. But for most of the folks out there, nada. Except for a few nerds that relished this wailing somewhat fierce. Only, it didn’t quite connect with large swathes of the fan crowd. Uriah Heep truly excelled with some pretty stellar songwriting. And others LSD’ed themselves through Rock and Hard Rock with sometimes spectacular and – at other times – spectacularly bad effects. Most of the other outfits liked to produce the flower-power induced and drug-infused bullshit that was a staple at that time. Actually, this record – I am tempted to call it a masterpiece – was way ahead of its time. Starting with ‘Very ‘eavy, Very ‘umble’ a year earlier, Uriah Heep went on full progressive mode with Salisbury. Actually the antagonist hero in the story, no less. The band’s name derives from the Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield, by the way. Salisbury, the 2nd studio album of early Uriah Heep is one of them. Because far into the past, there already were jewels that nobody really knows anymore. But often we cover modern artists and sometimes forget the old masters. In 2003, an expanded deluxe edition was released with 7 bonus tracks.Well, I have dabbled in Progressive Rock and Metal for a while. The album was remastered and released with two bonus tracks in 1996. "Salisbury" also features the song Lady In Black, which became one of the most popular songs in the band's history and is still a fan favourite played at Uriah Heep's every show. The album is notable for the band's first attempts at more complex compositions resulting in a 16minute title track. The US edition, just like with the debut album, had a different album cover.Ĭontrary to the first album, "Salisbury" was written mainly by Ken Hensley, who was the band's primary songwriter on most of its releases until his departure in 1980. Recorded in late 1970 in London and released in early 1971.
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