Music > Live Reviews
Uriah Heep + Diamond Head
The Nick Rayns LCR, UEA
06/12/19
Good Lord that was loud - really, really loud. I don’t think my ears have taken such a pummelling at the LCR since Motorhead in the mid-eighties damaged the hearing of an entire generation too young and stupid to know any better. And volume was but one feature of an evening that harkened back to ye olde days of Heavy Rock, with a double bill that had an aggregate lifespan of a mind boggling ninety two years. Mick Box is now the only original member of Uriah Heep, but such is the band’s longevity that new boys Phil Lanzon and Bernie Shaw have still managed to clock up over thirty years. Together with Russell Gilbrook on drums and Davey Rimmer on bass, they presented, with an energy and commitment men half their age would have been pleased with, a full throttled night of classic songs, together with a sprinkling of freshly minted tunes.
First, though, we had Diamond Head, which puzzled me. I’ve arrived at Uriah Heep having travelled down a road signposted Prog Rock, so while from the outset they’ve made no secret of being Very ‘Eavy, you surely come to their gig with expectations of music complexity and involving melodies. They are certainly going to attract that sort of crowd. Diamond Head are, by way of contrast, the quintessential NWOBHM band, a movement that was about stripping out all that noodling, and replacing it with the intensity of punk rock. What the Dickens (see what I did there) was Uriah Heep thinking of? From the outset, Diamond Head hammered home an uncompromising set that had my diaphragm turning somersaults and ears seeking blessed relief. In fairness, singer Rasmus Bom Andersen was in fine voice, and a good sport about the lukewarm reception from a somewhat bewildered crowd.
“How many Diamond Head fans do we have in tonight?” he asked, stopping to count the hands raised in response.
“Seventeen!” he concluded with a chuckle, before launching into yet another blistering song.
Brian Tatler, sole survivor from the eighties, seemed a lovely bloke, and you can’t help admire him plugging away all these years without significant commercial success. I didn’t really get it, and while many were on board by the end of their shift, many others looked as nonplussed as I felt. That said, Metallica are famously huge fans, so what do I know?
One of the many hard rock rules is that the headliner plays louder than the support, and accordingly Uriah Heep had already turned their volume knobs up to eleven before bravely kicking off with a song from the (relatively) new album. A galloping horses, double-barrelled affair, it quickly became apparent that those of us who had turned up for noodling were going to have to be patient. Sandwiched between this and the title track off of Living the Dream was the sole entry from Abominog. Sheepishly, I have to confess it’s my favourite Heep Album, despite being a transparent attempt to woo the US market, and I was sorry not to hear more from it. Instead, yet more newish stuff was trotted out (first Take Away My Soul and then Rocks in the Road) almost as if they wanted to get it out of the way before getting down to business. Once it arrived, that business started with an outing for Gypsy, finally demonstrating how much more there was to the band and its musical heritage. The sublimely complex July Morning was a reminder of how daring they were prepared to be back in the day, as was the folksy Lady in Black.
Along the way, we naturally got guitar, keyboard and drum solos, crowd sing-alongs, some affable chat from Bernie Shaw and Box preposterously wearing sunglasses throughout. The evening inevitably finished on a rousing encore of Easy Livin’ (proving not that every song had to be tricky to be good) and the band grinning from ear to ear as they played. It only served to consolidate the abiding impression throughout, of the strong bond between the men on stage, delighted that they still got to do this for a living.
