Uriah Heep - Live 2026 - special guest: Mother's Finest
URIAH HEEP are one of the early and most successful representatives of hard rock, with over 40 million albums sold, alongside Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath. Clear guitar melodies and cascading choral singing early on became their trademarks.
In 1969, the band founded by singer David Byron and guitarist Mick Box under the name Spice changed their name to Uriah Heep (after a character from Charles Dickens' novel "David Copperfield"). Their future trademarks were already evident in their debut album "Very Eavy, Very 'Umble," released in 1970: grandiose melodies, multi-part vocal harmonies, and timeless songs. Songs like "Gypsy," "Bird of Prey," and "Walking in Your Shadow" quickly made the band internationally known.
Their breakthrough across Europe came in 1971 with the album "Salisbury," featuring the rock classic "Lady in Black." They became true rock icons, especially in Germany.
The band celebrated their greatest successes in the early 1970s with the albums "Demons and Wizards," "The Magician's Birthday," and "Sweet Freedom," which achieved gold status in the USA. Characteristic of Uriah Heep were the multi-part vocals, which earned them the nickname "Beach Boys of Heavy Metal," as well as the distinctive use of Hammond organ and Mick Box's wah-wah-drenched guitar. The band sold around 40 million recordings worldwide and established themselves through relentless touring, particularly in Germany, Scandinavia, Japan, Eastern Europe, and Russia, where they played as the first western rock band in Moscow in 1987.
Despite numerous lineup changes, the musical quality remained constant. After a low period in the late 1970s, Uriah Heep made a successful comeback in 1982 with "Abominog." The "fourth era," starting in the mid-1980s, is considered particularly formative, with keyboardist Phil Lanzon and singer Bernie Shaw joining the band and shaping the face of Uriah Heep to this day. With them, the band released a series of modern, powerful albums like "Sea of Light" (1995), "Into the Wild" (2011), "Outsider" (2014), and "Living the Dream" (2018), recorded with producer Jay Ruston. In January 2023, their most recent album "Chaos & Colour" was released, reaching number 4 in the charts in Germany.
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
