''Firefly'' is the 10th studio album by British rock band Uriah Heep, released in February 1977 by

Bronze Records Bronze Records was an independent English record label founded in 1971 by record producer Gerry Bron on Oxford Street in London, eventually relocating to Chalk Farm. History Bron had been producing Uriah Heep for Vertigo Records, and he set up ...

in the UK and

Warner Bros. Records Warner Records Inc. (formerly Warner Bros. Records Inc.) is an American record label. A subsidiary of the Warner Music Group, it is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. It was founded on March 19, 1958, as the recorded music division of the ...

in the US. It was their first album without lead vocalist and founding member

David Byron David Garrick (29 January 1947 – 28 February 1985), better known by his stage name David Byron, was a British singer, who was best known in the early 1970s as the lead vocalist with the rock band Uriah Heep. Byron possessed a powerful oper ...

, and the first of three albums with new singer John Lawton, formerly of

Lucifer's Friend Lucifer's Friend was a German rock band, formed in Hamburg in 1970 by guitarist Peter Hesslein, singer John Lawton, bassist Dieter Horns, keyboardist Peter Hecht, and drummer Joachim Reitenbach. The group was an early practitioner of heavy met ...

. Bassist

Trevor Bolder Trevor Bolder (9 June 1950 – 21 May 2013) was an English rock musician, songwriter and record producer. He is best known for his long association with Uriah Heep and his tenure with the Spiders from Mars, the backing band for David Bowie, a ...

made his Uriah Heep debut on this album. Barring a break of about 18 months in the early 1980s, he remained with the group until his death in 2013. The first single from the album was " Wise Man". The original vinyl album was a gatefold sleeve, with a cardboard lyric liner. The album was remastered and reissued by

Castle Communications Castle Communications, also known as Castle Music, was a British independent record label and home video distributor founded in 1983 by Terry Shand, Cliff Dane, and Jon Beecher. Its video imprint was called Castle Vision. The label's producti ...

in 1997 with four bonus tracks, and again in 2004 in an expanded deluxe edition.

Reception

A retrospective review by

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

said that the album "pursued a stripped-down sound harking back to the group's early-'70s successes," and concluded that "''Firefly'' remains one of the most cohesive albums from Uriah Heep's mid- to late-'70s period".

Martin Popoff Martin Popoff (born April 28, 1963) is a Canadian music journalist, critic and author. He is mainly known for writing about the genre of heavy metal music. The senior editor and co-founder of ''Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles'', he has additionally ...

in his ''Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal'' defined the album as "a mixed bag of scroungy, comatose blues ballads, nerdy party rockers and scary prog rock abortions", proving the intensification of "the deconstruction of a once great collective".

Track listing

Personnel

Uriah Heep *

Mick Box Michael Frederick Box (born 9 June 1947) is an English musician who is the lead guitarist of rock group Uriah Heep, having previously been a member of The Stalkers and Spice, both with original Uriah Heep vocalist David Byron.Larkin, Colin (20 ...

– guitars *

Ken Hensley Kenneth William David Hensley (24 August 1945 – 4 November 2020) was an English singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, best known for his work with Uriah Heep during the 1970s. He wrote or co-wrote the majority of Uriah ...

– keyboards, guitars, backing vocals * Lee "The Bear" Kerslake – drums, backing vocals *

– bass guitar * John Lawton – lead vocals Production *

Gerry Bron Gerald Lincoln "Gerry" Bron (1 March 1933 – 18 June 2012) was an English record producer and band manager. Early life and education Bron was born in Hendon, Middlesex, into a Jewish family, the elder brother of actress Eleanor Bron. Their fat ...

– producer * Peter Gallen – engineer * John Gallen – assistant engineer * Gail Clarke – cover concept and coordination * Martin White – cover painting

Charts

Album

Singles

References

External links

The Official Uriah Heep Discography
* {{Authority control 1977 albums Uriah Heep (band) albums Albums produced by Gerry Bron Bronze Records albums Warner Records albums