Dotoar

That's better, cut out the crap and leave the goodies! Well, it's still all over the place and not every track is worthy but as a whole I feel that "Salisbury" is a step forward for the band. It's obvious that they still do everything they can to avoid sounding like their genre brethren, and they mostly pull it off better on here than on the cobweb-covered debut. (That's not to say I prefer the full frontal display of a panzer tank, though). The sound is more polished and rehearsed and the songs themselves are more complex which makes for an intriguing listen this time around, although I'd still be hard pressed to dub it 'progressive'. They had already used up at least two drummers at the time and for this album they recruited Keith Baker. Not that it's really obvious or anything, but he did what he should just fine. What is more apparent is that Ken Hensley started to get involved in the songwriting which may have been a crucial factor for the improvement, and he gets a whole three tracks all by himself already, one of which turned out to be one of their most successful songs ever.

You know what I'm talking about, don't you? The acoustic-driven folk-rocker "Lady in black", consisting of exactly two chords repeated over and over again for almost five minutes and features Hensley himself on vocals for a change. And it doesn't even have a chorus, just a prolonged "aaaaah" that nonetheless makes it instantly recognizable. The anecdotic and somewhat preachy verses are set to a medieval-tinged melody of the kind that contemporary folk bands like Lindisfarne and Steeleye Span would cook up in spades. Of course, none of them would ever have dared to nail it upon a wall of acoustic repetitive strumming and booming drums. The Heepsters simply turned it into one big anthemic mantra and it is a deserved classic. Another mellow folk tune is the inferior but still decent "The park" which is sort of a follow-up to "Come away Melinda", only much better, thank god! The wimpy verses, delivered by Byron sounding almost like Pye Hastings in Caravan, suddenly become interrupted by a jazzy interlude featuring a weird start/stop structure, possibly inspired by "21st century schizoid man", although naturally less dexterous and like I said earlier, I refuse to acknowledge it as prog rock. Still a nice breather between the harder tracks though.

The heavier "Time to live" and "High priestess" are too primitive to offer anything special although the former is slightly better in terms of melodicity. When it comes to memorable riffs however, well, there aren't any! These two tracks successfully commenced their fine tradition of stuffing their albums with offensive c o c k rock fillers that lack both melody, power and riffs. And I don't mean that they are built upon bland and hookless riffs, I literally mean no riffs! Do you realize how worthless a metal tune becomes without at least one riff that carries it? Heep turned out to be true masters of the riff-less metal song, which spawned the way for trillions of sleaze bands and other forms of low-end collective organisms to come. So much for innovation. Jerks! The opener "Bird of prey" on the other hand, is really exciting. Now we have them riffs, and iron hard they are! But what makes the song is the marvellous interweaving between these riffs and the bizarre operatic wailings, crowned by Byron in overdrive. Of course, I can see why many people would think of it as a ridiculous put-on but then you'd have to write off stuff like "Bohemian rhapsody" for the same reason as well, and would you want to really? It's just pure fun that opens the album on a high and adrenaline-rising note.

The centerpiece is of course the 16-minute title track that concludes it all. Now, orchestral arrangements in rock settings were not, I repeat not, groundbreaking even at this time. Deep Purple, Pink Floyd and Nice had done the same thing several times before and a lot of other bands had ever since the glory days of psychedelia peppered selected outputs with symphonic arrangements, not least Yes, Procol Harum and Moody Blues, and don't even begin to mention "Pet sounds". Oh well, it's rather obvious that Heep wanted to hang onto the coattails of Purple on this one and what it mainly reminds me of is not so much the "Concerto for group & orchestra" suite, but rather "April" from their third album. There's not much songwriting to be found here; The sung parts are few and not very elaborate, working very much in the standard heavy rock they had established themselves. The orchestral themes aren't very impressive either as they vaguely seem to repeat the same stanza over and over again. But the arrangement as a whole is profound and dramatic enough to uphold the interest and for a band like Uriah Heep it sure is impressive. But please, could someone tell Mick Box that not everything needs to be played at rapid-fire speed through a wah-wah?

Arguably we find Heep at the top of their artsiness on here and the interesting thing is that the more complex stuff really works this time. It may seem contradictory regarding my introductory statement but I still feel that it's the naivity of a young and aspiring band trying out all kinds of things that carries the pretentions on "Salisbury", as differed from the more straight-faced bombast that would soon emerge on the later albums. As soon as they had settled with their trademark style, which they nonetheless mastered just fine, they simply became stuck with very narrow prospects which made their limitations all the more visible whenever they tried to diversify it. But that's later.

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