Uriah Heep – ...Very 'Eavy Very 'Umble...

Cannot believe I found this in a blank white cover with “Uriah Heep” written on it in red marker at a rummage sale for one dollar in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. Being a huge fan, this was a score.

It’s a very good pressing but I think it’s a little muffled. To have an excellent experience i had to EQ it a little bit adding 2 or 3dB in treble.

Uriah Heep's debut is the ultimate head-banging classic & remains a cornerstone of vintage hard rock delivering a crushing assault of prog tinged thick ‘n-‘eavy killer grooves, wild breakout organ solos, wailing guitar & moody atmospherics & introducing the patented Heepster banshee stacked vocal harmonies creating their distinctive tonal sound.
Impressive start of bigger things to come.

Score of cheap copy of this album not original but it sounds great great sound all around no complaints

heads up, the US artwork is Black Butterflies (1949) by Virgil Finlay. he’s completely uncredited on any issues as far as i know

my first contact wit Uriah Heep was in the early eighties. a best of…
if i had known that their work is this awesome i would have bought their full albums earlier.
the sound on this reissue is fantastic. only downside: my LP is a dust magnet. had to put it in Nagaoka inner sleeves after a good cleaning.

What a great old find. The repress I have of this release is NM for 40 plus years old. If you are an older fan of Black Sabath, Ozzy, Deep Purple, Zep or Rush with a little of peace fantasy of the era perhaps you will thoroughly enjoy this release!

Amazing sounding early pressing, very crisp and has a great amount of bass. Highly recommend

For what it's worth, the version of Bird of Prey which appears on the US Mercury/Phillips release is different (and lesser) than the version which appears on my copy of Salisbury (GEMA/Vertigo).

Notwithstanding some dip shit from Rolling Stone’s awful review of their debut LP, Britain’s Uriah Heep took their rightful place among their peers Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple as one of heavy metal’s originators. ‘Very ‘eavy, Very ‘umble’ established the Heep formula of loud distorted guitar along with a pulverizing Hammond organ sound. The one thing that set Uriah Heep from their contemporaries, almost from day one, was their harmonies which made even the most demonic song sound like a choir of angels. And that album cover is a scream as well, just David Byron covered with cobwebs, but man does that image ram home how deadly serious this band was! Though it would take a few years to solidify the classic line-up, the three mainstays, vocalist David Byron, guitarist Mick Box and second guitarist and keyboard player Ken Hensley immediately stamped their mark on early hard rock and no song could have done a better job of introducing them to the world then album opener “Gypsy”. This song is an absolute mastodon of heavy rock and for many there was little the band has done since then that is more highly regarded than a song that begins with ‘When I was only 17, I fell in love with a gypsy queen’. Other key songs include “Walking in Your Shadow”, “Dreammare '', “Real Turned On” and “I’ll Keep on Tryin’”. Their cover of “Come Away Melinda” and “Wake Up (Set Your Sights)” show the band in a more of a progressive form of which many credit the band for combining early metal with progressive rock. The song quality is pretty solid which is surprising because Hensley, who would later be the main songwriter, didn’t write on this record, having only recently joined. Only “Lucy’s Blues”' kind of fails to make an impression on this listener, not terrible, just a very generic blues. The US version had “Bird of Prey '' (which would appear on the band’s second LP ‘Salisbury’) which was a much better choice and served to make the debut even heavier. ‘Very ‘eavy’’ isn’t the band’s best but it was a damn good start to a career that is still going strong more than 50 years on. I also feel that if you are new to the band, you certainly start here as the quality is pretty comparable to some of their better known records such as ‘Look at Yourself’ (my personal fave), ‘Demons and Wizards’ and ‘The Magician’s Birthday’. Then it’s gone as fast as it came, evil dream…