Label: Silver Lininig Music
Release date: 27 Jan 2023
Production: Jay Ruston
Album length: 59.24 min
Genre: Art Rock
Rating: 9.0/10
Uriah Heep are one of the few living rock’n’roll fossils you can honestly say are still kicking at full power, even though they’ve long since outlived Abraham. I wouldn’t dare say that if the band weren’t recording fresh original material and were instead just ‘hitching a ride’ on past glory, like plenty of their still-active contemporaries from this iconic rock quintet’s generation. The new album »Chaos & Colour« is, believe it or not, the band’s twenty-fifth (proper) studio album. Its predecessor, »Living The Dream« (RockLine review), came out in mid-September 2018, and with it Uriah Heep fully made up for the unconvincing “Outsider” (2014) by showing up on “Living The Dream” with incredible freshness of ideas and creative firepower, which is why we can safely call it at least the equal of »Wake The Sleeper« (2008). In some respects it even tops it. I’ve only ranked four post-millennium Uriah Heep albums on that level.
The new album »Chaos & Colour« was recorded throughout 2021 and wrapped up as early as November 2021. The band, or more precisely their new label Silver Lining Music, waited for the situation around the imposed measures that brought the planet to a standstill for two years to settle down and for the live scene to get going again. Last year Uriah Heep finally managed to wrap up their anniversary tour, on which the guys (belatedly, like plenty of others in their shoes) celebrated 50 years in business.
So the time has come for the new album, which had been waiting for more than a year. In one interview Box hinted that the band has never had any say over when a given Uriah Heep album comes out, so the release date is entirely the call of the new label, Silver Lining Music. A solid four years have passed since the predecessor. Has anything changed? No. »Chaos & Colour« is exactly the kind of album we expect and want from Uriah Heep (in the line-up active since 2013). The band delivers its own artistic character on it, full-blooded. But here’s the thing. Today’s Uriah Heep sound is really a combination of the old seventies era and what the band started working into its vocabulary from the album »Raging Silence« (1989) onward. Through a series of three excellent but unjustly overlooked albums released in the nineties, they brilliantly ‘blurred’ the seventies in their artistry, only to flirt with their roots more openly again on “Wake The Sleeper” (2008). The last two albums are thus the embodiment of a singular artistry in merging old sonic pastels with modern approaches. We can call them achievements on which Uriah Heep drove the collision of the two musical worlds of their career (past and present) to sheer, absolute perfection. And with all that said, the new Uriah Heep remain damn well wound up in the production.
»Chaos & Colour« slyly rolls between progressive rock elements and a scorching, resurrected metal-style phrasing jargon, where Box on guitar and Lanzon on Hammond trade in a brilliant new symbiosis with off-the-charts octane power, all of it seasoned with a bagful of gorgeous, grabby melodies! Gilbrook and Rimmer have become noticeable building blocks of the sound. You could feel that more strongly on “Living The Dream”, and on “Chaos & Colour” the two youngest members stand out even more in everything they do. The rhythm section is, in short, relentlessly ‘destructive’. The bass lines and drums boast incredible commitment. Gilbrook has never sounded so varied and ‘wrecking’ at the same time. Ferocious. Once again the rhythm section creates a superb contrast in completing the production picture of the sound itself. The cherry on top is Bernie Shaw’s vocal, naturally equipped with the character of backing harmonies that add to the pomp and bombast the band is known for. In this respect Uriah Heep are great pioneers of that element, one The Sweet and Queen learned from. On this album, too, Uriah Heep remain masters of conjuring mysteries and creating magic.
Brilliant production! In it, the building blocks of the sound communicate with the listener 100% live. Organic. Okay, there are a few after-the-fact studio tricks (e.g. extra stacked vocal lines), but generally speaking, what you hear on the album is what you’d get at a (studio) gig. The band still records albums like in the old days. Live. In the studio. Like a concert. Bernie Shaw has lost some height, but his recognizable vocal character, without which Uriah Heep’s musical dossier is unimaginable ever since 1986 (when Bernie joined the band), has become ‘velvety and thickened’, while still responding with liveliness and explosiveness throughout.
Besides the grabby chorus melodies and the brilliant atmospheric build-up (on the road from verse, through pre-chorus, into the chorus’s crescendo of mood), the mid-eight passages are a story of their own, where this time all three of Box, Lanzon and Rimmer get to catch their breath. Rimmer has never been so exposed in the sound as on the previous and the latest album. Rimmer also got much more involved in writing the new material this time. The ‘hyper-musical’ nature of his bass ‘pulses and digs’ its way through the album with serious fire. In this lavish, lively sound it works at least as an equal to the other building blocks, and at times even stands out.
Anyway, »Chaos & Colour« opens very wound up. Save Me Tonight is a poisonous opening shrapnel blast. Gilbrook rages on the drums. The track brings a catchy assault! The adrenaline rush is here! Next comes the especially rocky, sonically massive Silver Sunlight, followed by a ‘prayer to the sun’, the spiritually tinged Hail the Sunrise, whose phrasing carries some rustic parallels comparable to the classic Gypsy. Hurricane, released as the album’s second single, counts as one of the darkest tracks on the new album.
For those with more refined taste, the three longest tracks on this album bring the most interest. The first real peak among them is One Nation, One Soul. Its intro, where Phil Lanzon’s piano takes the central role alongside Bernie’s sensual vocal exposé, opens shyly and fragilely (in the mold of the ballad Rain). But that ballad intro is deceiving. It’s actually the band’s first progressive adventure on the album. The track speaks balladically for only the first three minutes, then stretches out into a mini EP, with no shortage of mood shifts through strings of motifs that nonetheless keep the song compact. Still, the track takes on a progressive character. Comparable to moves on the predecessor »Living The Dream» and its Dreams Of Yesterday and Rocks On The Road. Only, the guys have once again turned the arrangements their own way. Freedom To Be Free is the longest track on the album and yet another ode by the band to freedom and liberation. It sits in the closing part of the album. The mighty Hammond sound is especially rustic here. The build-up surprises particularly in how the lively vocal melodies develop, and in the playful shifts of rhythmic kinetics. The track has two instrumental passages. In the first, Rimmer really ‘throws himself around’ on bass guitar, showing off his talents. The second belongs to Box, of course! The pile of tricks the masters worked into this composition brings the album another one of its more exciting moments when it comes to flirting with progressive elements.
The especially wonderful You’ll Never Be Alone is another point on the album that clearly gravitates toward the spheres of progressive rock. Comparable to a mini epic symphony of the July Morning type, only ‘updated’ and released in 2023. No sin in that. There’s no shortage of atmospheric jolts built on a lively string of motifs as the band creates a pompous drama theater. This one doesn’t even lack a part in which Russell Gilbrook seizes a wild double bass drum torpedoing. In terms of songwriting and the specific magic only this quintet creates, it’s one of the album’s peaks, crowned with a new grabby chorus melody. The established swing of mood between the fragile, piano-led verse and the wrecking, massive assault of the phrasing (chorus) literally shakes the listener, because it hits so unpredictably.
Golden Light is a candidate for the album’s third single and one of the most under-the-skin seductive compositions on the whole album, especially when Uriah Heep leap from the pre-chorus into one of the album’s most musical and seductive choruses. A track with a vibe comparable to the distinctly musical nature of Take Away My Soul from the predecessor »Living The Dream« (2018).
It has to be pointed out that the label Silver Lining Music used a not exactly fair trick. The material on the CD differs from the material on the vinyl. The vinyl got the short end of the stick, with nine tracks on it versus eleven on the CD. The vinyl is stripped of Age Of Changes and Closer To Your Dreams. The first carries some compositional parallels with Uriah Heep in the era of the albums »Sea Of Light« (1995) and »Sonic Origami« (1998), in the vein of Between Two Worlds and/or Against The Odds, while Closer To Your Dreams, parked at the very tail end of the CD, ‘dared to borrow’ the rhythmic gallop of the evergreen hit Easy Livin’. So? Both tracks are gorgeous, and if you happen to be a vinyl devotee, you’ll have to find another way this time to get to these two points of the CD version of the album. The label is to blame. Age Of Changes in particular is a fantastic track, so the most hardened fans of the band, and of vinyl especially, will have to buy both the CD and the vinyl this time.
While we’re on the details, it’s worth mentioning the ‘de-luxe’ CD version of the album too. It concerns the single Save Me Tonight. Jeff Scott Soto collaborated with the band on the new album again. On the previous album he was credited as co-writer on the track Grazed By Heaven, and on the new one, “Chaos & Colour”, on Save Me Tonight. In the regular version of the track on the album, his vocal is ‘sunk’ into the background of the mix, since his role is primarily to contrast Bernie Shaw’s lead melodies with additional background vocal harmonies. The listener doesn’t even notice until they read the facts. Well, on the ‘de-luxe’ version of the album, you’ll find a demo recording of Save Me Tonight at the tail end. That demo was recorded together (in the manner of a studio performance) by Jeff Scott Soto, Uriah Heep bassist Dave Rimmer, Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner and excellent Brazilian drummer Bruno Agra (ex-Aquaria, Revolution Renaissance, We Are The Harlot), and then sent as an mp3 to the rest of the Uriah Heep line-up for further polishing (a similar demo version of the single Hurricane exists too) .
The album »Chaos & Colour« is heavily loaded with decibels. Noisy. But at the same time it has the band’s own artistry. It’s also packed with melody and progressive tricks. Uriah Heep haven’t flirted with progressive elements in such abundance for a long time, not like on »Chaos & Colour«. The predecessor “Living The Dream” was pitched in that sphere too, but “Chaos & Colour” speaks not only more progressively, it also feels a touch darker, and at times Uriah Heep develop even more punch and edge. It’s a more wound-up, metal-glaring album. But in every way an equal successor. At least equal. As for the nuances of which of the two albums you like better, that’s for you to decide.
Mick Box remains the loudest guitarist in the galaxy of his generation. That’s indisputable. And as long as he keeps glowing and radiating the kind of power his playing manifests, full of sparkling ideas and (his own) pranks on the album »Chaos & Colour«, and at almost 76 years old (he turns that on 9 June 2023), we can say that Uriah Heep are truly living through a long era of late spring in their mature years. A renaissance. A rebirth. What the new album shows is a fascinating creative freshness carried over from the predecessor, spoiling the listener with a luxury of ideas at every turn. »Chaos & Colour« is a brand-new, pure-as-a-tear Uriah Heep album, announcing that the unique and utterly fascinating story of one of the most interesting and influential bands in rock history is far from over. You can hardly believe you can even write something like that about a band after more than 50 years in business. But there are exceptions. So Uriah Heep keep living their dream! With undiminished drive and fire.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Save Me Tonight
2. Silver Sunlight
3. Hail The Sunrise
4. Age Of Changes*
5. Hurricane
6. One Nation, One Sun
7. Golden Light
8. You’ll Never Be Alone
9. Fly Like An Eagle
10. Freedom To Be Free
11. Closer To Your Dreams*
12. Save Me Tonight (Demo)**
* CD and digital version only
** ‘de-luxe’ CD version only
Line-up:
Mick Box – guitar, backing vocals
Phil Lanzon – keyboards, backing vocals
Bernie Shaw – vocals
Russell Gilbrook – drums, backing vocals
Dave Rimmer – bass guitar, backing vocals
Guest musicians:
Jeff Scott Soto – backing vocals (1, 5), vocals (12)
Richie Faulkner – guitar (12)
Bruno Agra – drums (12)
