Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Venue: Helmut List Halle / Graz / Austria
Concert date: April 23, 2010
Attendance: 700
Ticket price: €32.00
Barely four months have passed since our last Uriah Heep visit in Salzburg on December 20, 2009 (RockLine report HERE), and the guys are already out on a new tour. It’s still called “Celebration 40. Years Of Rock”, so it’s dedicated to four decades of the band holding their ground on the rock scene. This was the third date in Austria, with a stop in Graz on the schedule. Almost nine solid years had passed since Uriah Heep last played Graz. That was May 3, 2001, a show on the tour promoting the album “Sonic Origami” (1998). The years fly by, but even though they’ve added only modestly to their studio catalog over the past decade, Uriah Heep have by no means left the stage. Every year they roam around Europe at the very least, and over the past decade they’ve made up for the shortage of new studio albums with assorted live releases and compilations. And people definitely haven’t forgotten them.
In Graz, concert activity is slowly shifting from the beloved Orpheum theater to the former soap factory (Seifenfabrik) and the Helmut List Halle. So I got my first chance to check out the Helmut List Halle. The hall, which holds 2,000 heads when it’s packed to the rafters, welcomed a good 700 curious souls and supporters of the band this time, who were waiting for the famous orchestra of orchids at half past eight in the evening. No opening act. What a relief! We’ll be back in Ljubljana before one in the morning!
Last year Uriah Heep re-recorded some of the band’s biggest classic hits in the studio and released the album “Celebration 40. Years Of Rock” (RockLine review HERE), which includes two brand-new tracks, and they pretty much built the setlist on the model of the material on that compilation album. They tacked on three songs from their latest album “Wake The Sleeper” (2008), and added Love In Silence (“Sea Of Light”, 1995) and the delicate classic ballad Rain (“Magician’s Birthday”, 1972).
The Helmut List Halle has a spacious stage, and its generous footprint was a great invitation for the band to spread out. Uriah Heep love that, because despite their advanced years, the guys are known for never standing still on stage and moving around actively the whole time. The gigantic dark curtain in the back made a great sound catcher, so the sound wouldn’t get scattered and lost. I can’t forget our Ljubljana hall at the Gospodarsko razstavišče and the horrifying sound traps it offers. The spacious stage and the interior of the Helmut List Halle itself vaguely reminded me of the hall where (luckily only sometimes) they put on concerts at the Gospodarsko razstavišče.
In Uriah Heep’s case, everything really worked like a charm this time. The sound was perfectly balanced. The multi-part vocal harmonies of backing vocalists Lanzon, Bolder, Gilbrook and Box worked optimally while supporting Bernie. The singer was having a truly great day. His lines stayed intact through the hour and 40 minutes the show lasted. He crowned his vocal performance with some brilliantly delivered endings, which he sang at full power, convincingly hitting the heights he was after. He especially elevated the closings of Love In Silence, Sunrise and, as always, one of the highlights of every Uriah Heep concert, July Morning. Over the course of the show the band ran into almost no sound hiccups. In Love In Silence, Lanzon’s synthesizer was set a bit too quiet, and in Free N’ Easy Box’s famous riff was getting slightly lost. There’s hardly anything else to nitpick.
As always, the band does best when playing the cult classics. Wizard, Gypsy, Sunrise, July Morning, Bird Of Prey, Free Me and of course Easy Livin’ are the moments when Uriah Heep confidently rule the scene. The newer songs are superbly woven into the older material by design, especially thanks to the heavy use of Hammond keyboards, which, in harmony with Box’s guitar, create that unmistakable Uriah Heep energetic drive.
The crowd first let loose a big wave of energy during Bird Of Prey, then during Wizard and the obligatory and much-wanted evergreen mega hit Free Me, the rocky and dark riff monster Gypsy and of course the mini epic July Morning. In the latter, this time too there was no escaping Mick Box’s obligatory wah-wah and Bolder’s jolting solo in the outro. What went down in the encore hardly needs spelling out when the big hits Easy Livin’ and Lady In Black are on the menu. For connoisseurs of Uriah Heep concerts, Lady In Black is a compulsory routine. They have to play it, or the crowd will behead them. And yet maybe in the future they could consider playing it in the regular set and shaking up the predictable endings of their shows with a surprise or two they haven’t played in a long time
Uriah Heep are constantly on tour. They play nonstop. Not only does that make them superbly tight, they also sense and communicate with each other perfectly. The top-notch atmosphere they create at their shows, without any makeup or prerecorded backing tricks, is triumphantly crowned with phenomenal multi-part harmony singing. On this tour the band is presenting the biggest hits. They play them flawlessly. If the conditions for performing them are optimal, as they were at the Helmut List Halle, then a concertgoer, especially a newcomer or someone who’s freshly warmed up to the legends but hasn’t seen them live yet, can get their concert maximum. The Graz experience confirmed that, and personally I can say this Uriah Heep show was definitely one of the best I’ve seen so far. It makes my personal “Top 5”! With the show in Treviso on May 8, 2010, the band will wrap up their roaming around Europe and head off to other continents. In July they return to the European festival stages. So there’s no end to the story in sight. Like true rock gurus, Uriah Heep have wholeheartedly and happily waded into their 5th decade. Anyone who missed hanging out with the band in Graz missed a truly top-notch concert.
One more thing! RockLine will catch the band in Treviso, Italy, too, on May 8, 2010, where Uriah Heep will play under different conditions. It’ll be a club show, with an intimate atmosphere but much tougher conditions for shaping optimal sound.
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist
1. Intro
2. Wake The Sleeper
3. Return To Fantasy
4. Only Human
5. Book Of Lies
6. Bird Of Prey
7. Corridors Of Madness
8. Love In Silence
9. Rain
10. Wizard
11. Free Me
12. Sunrise
13. Free N’ Easy
14. Gypsy
15. Angels Walk With You
16. July Morning
—encore—
17. Easy Livin’
18. Lady In Black
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