Review: Uriah Heep, Marble Factory

Few bands can truthfully claim to have released one of their best albums 45 years into their career. Certainly, the likes of the Stones ran out of creative juice decades ago. But Uriah Heep have just put out their second great collection of the new millennium (after 2009’s Wake the Sleeper) and are keen that we should hear a good half of it. That’s a bold and confident move when a large proportion of your audience have long passed the age of 33 – at which, depressing recent statistics reveal, people stop listening to new music altogether. Those researchers clearly didn’t quiz this bunch of greybeards, who receive all the new stuff from The Outsider with enthusiasm – especially Can’t Take That Away and the insistently catchy One Minute, driven by Phil Lanzon’s magnificent Hammond keyboard (or modern high-tech equivalent) sound.

There are some surprises too. The Hanging Tree, which opens 1977’s mediocre Firefly, is dusted down and given a proper guitar-heavy makeover that suggest its merits may have been overlooked. And halfway through the set, chummy Canadian vocalist Bernie Shaw (a Johnny-come-lately who’s clocked up a mere 29 years in the band) pauses to remind us that 1972 was a great year for music in general and progressive rock in particular before introducing The Magician’s Birthday (“I hope you’re standing comfortably, because this is going to take some time,” he quips) – all ten glorious, occasionally preposterous minutes of it, including band founder Mick Box’s lengthy guitar solo, though the kazoo section is sadly omitted. To prove the point that they can still knock out such epics, this is followed by the Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee-inspired What Kind of God? from Wake the Sleeper.

The only way out of Heep at this stage in the game would appear to be in a coffin. Sadly, that’s exactly what happened to bassist and former Spider from Mars Trevor Bolder, who died in 2013. His replacement Davey Rimmer has a pleasing touch of the Derek Smalls about him as well as a remarkably similar, impressively fluid playing style that fits right in. He also takes his share of those distinctive four-part harmony vocals.

Naturally, there are certain staples that the Heep audience demands to hear: July Morning, Sunrise, Stealin’, Lady in Black and the encores of Gypsy (featuring the heaviest riff Tony Iommi never wrote) and Easy Livin’. What’s so remarkable is that unlike certain bands who fulfil such obligations grudgingly, they don’t seem remotely jaded as they play these songs for the 17,435th (estimate) time to a few hundred punters in Bristol on a blustery Tuesday night. “We’re still really enjoying ourselves,” Shaw confides in a near-whisper, as though fearful that someone will find out and put a stop to it.