Uriah Heep - ... Very 'Eavy ... Very 'Umble

Ah, the first Uriah Heep album. It's an absolute mess. I love it, but it is not good. You can call it "proto heavy metal" if you absolutely have to, but ...Very 'Eavy...Very 'Umble is quite audibly British Acid Rock from start to finish. 

What's the difference between Acid Rock and Psychedelic Rock? Glad you asked. The first two Pink Floyd albums are psychedelic. Early Moody Blues is psychedelic. Progressive Rock grew out of psychedelic.

Acid Rock is the Iron Butterfly, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, oh god the walls are melting extreme kind of psychedelia that blossomed into the proper Heavy Metal of Steppenwolf, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin we all know and love. It's all still basically Blues Rock, but louder, crunchier, and at times downright nightmarish.

Nightmarish, that's a good description of the organ and guitar solos on this charming monstrosity. Don't even get me started on the abysmal production. This album will make you realize that as bad as every Rolling Stones album sounds, at least they knew how to make all the tracks roughly the same volume. I guarantee at least twice you'll think your record player spontaneously broke while enjoying Uriah Heep. 

Like I said, I adore this album, but there's a very good reason people say check out Look At Yourself or Demons & Wizards as your first experience with the Heep. Those albums sound like everybody was doing their thing on purpose. Eavy/Umble sounds like several knobs and faders on the mixing console were broken, which totally didn't matter because nobody actually knew which song they were recording while they were recording it. 

Which is not to say it's a trainwreck. Not at all. It's coherent, albeit in an every possible thing all at once kind of way. Huge walls of vocal overdubs, barely audible solo rhythm guitar parts, high octave bass tremolos nobody asked for, lighting the organ on fire then pushing it off the balcony, forgetting how to improvise mid guitar solo, it all just miraculously doesn't fall apart. 

I kid you not, critics threatened to kill themselves if forced to listen to a second Uriah Heep album, and yeah you can plainly hear they're on to something. They haven't achieved that something, but the potential rings loud and clear. Loud and warbly, at the very least. I won't spoil it by describing the individual songs, you'll just have to experience the whole album for yourself. Hopefully nobody normalized the tracks, though, that would spoil a fair bit of the excitement.