Uriah Heep - Wake the Sleeper

Not exactly metal, but these guys play really good progressive rock. Has anyone picked up the new album from Uriah Heep? I'm listening to it right now and it's friggin' great.

That's funny. Brought it with me to listen to today. It is great. One of their heavier albums.

Uriah Heep were a great band. They did have some more metal albums. I've not heard Wake the Sleeper yet.

I've not heard 'Wake The Sleeper' either but I consider Uriah Heep one of the earlier pioneers of heavy metal, their self titled album, 'The Magician's Birthday' and 'Demons and Wizards' where considered very heavy back in the early 70's.

I like WTS a lot, I have all their stuff and this is a top 5 for me.

Wake The Sleeper is phenominal loved it. Hey spectre the avatar of Light force describe them to me what is their sound?

Wargod51

I have Wake the Sleeper. It was in my top ten of 2008.

Book of Lies is probably my favourite track off it, despite its radio friendly melody. 'Shadow' is infectious, too.

Wake The Sleeper is a great album. One of my top albums from 2008.

Got the album about a week ago. Amazing. Uriah heep is an awesome band!

Gilbert wrote:

Got the album about a week ago. Amazing. Uriah heep is an awesome band!

Yes. This one and the follow-up Into the Wild are both great. I should play both again sometime soon now that I have days off work.

The latest one (Outsider) I didn't like as much.

Need to get into the wild as well!

You know Mick Box is going to deliver on the guitar, but I also really like Bernie Shaw's flawless smooth vocals.

And Wake the Sleeper sounds really fresh. It's the updated sound but there's always that sense of originality and deep understanding of melody, and every song is so well crafted. I just saw my original old post. I still really like Book of Lies and Shadow.

Just listened to it & now almost ten years after it's release I still think it sounds excellent.

Shadow, Overload, Book Of Lies, stand out for me.

I have some of their earlier stuff, from the debut up to Magicians Birthday. I want to get the rest of Byrons albums, but haven't gotten around to it yet. On a whim, I picked up Wake the Sleeper and was really surprised at how good it was. I guess I just never expected them to be able to put out such solid music all these years later. Ended up getting Into the Wild shortly after, and it to is a very good album.

I keep seeing that they tour a lot, but so far nothing close to me. Hopefully one of these days they make it my way, would love to see them.

assault_attack wrote:

Just listened to it & now almost ten years after it's release I still think it sounds excellent.

Shadow, Overload, Book Of Lies, stand out for me.

Yeah, that's a good one, too.

While the songs are generally well written and Box's playing is stellar as ever, the absence of the vocal dynamics of David Byron and Ken Hensley really make these recent albums sound quite flat to my ear. Bernie Shaw is ok, and I appreciate that he has been with the band for over 30 years now! But his voice is quite bland, I think. While he can replicate some of the classics, he doesn't really add much to the new songs at all.

I think they sound pretty damn good to me! A shade better than anything Deep Purple has done in a very long time...