''High and Mighty'' is the ninth studio album by British hard rock band Uriah Heep, released in 1976 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. ''High and Mighty'' was the last Uriah Heep album to feature vocalist and founding member David Byron, who was subsequently fired due to his troubles with alcohol (he later died in 1985) and bassist

John Wetton John Kenneth Wetton (12 June 1949 – 31 January 2017) was an English musician, singer, and songwriter. Known for his dexterous bass playing and booming baritone voice, Wetton first gained fame in the early 1970s. Wetton was the singer and p ...

and

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 ...

shared vocal duties on the single "

One Way or Another "One Way or Another" is a song by American new wave band Blondie from their 1978 album ''Parallel Lines''. Lyrically, the song was inspired by Blondie frontwoman Deborah Harry's experience with a stalker in the early 1970s, an incident which ...

". The original vinyl release was a single sleeve, with the lyrics reproduced on the inner 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 product ...

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

Reception

The album was not well received, as stylistically it veered from their earlier

progressive rock Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog; sometimes conflated with art rock) is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. In ...

vein into more mainstream territory, and lacked the group's signature lengthy compositions and fantastical subject matter. "Several of the songs find the band flirting with pop elements in a way that doesn't complement their hard rocking style", said Donald A. Guarisco in his retrospective

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 databa ...

review. He added that ''High and Mighty'' "shows flashes of the group's old firepower, but is ultimately sunk by a combination of unfocused experimentation and uneven songwriting".

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 additionall ...

called the album "effeminate, illogical, overblown, grasping for straws", citing only the song "One Way or Another" as "promising" and the rest a squandering of "the band's flickering talents".

Track listing

Personnel

;Uriah Heep * David Byron – vocals (except "One Way or Another") *

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 ...

– lead guitar, acoustic guitar, 12-string acoustic guitar *

– organ, piano, Moog synthesizer,

tubular bells Tubular bells (also known as chimes) are musical instruments in the percussion family. Their sound resembles that of church bells, carillon, or a bell tower; the original tubular bells were made to duplicate the sound of church bells within a ...

, electric piano, guitar, slide guitar, acoustic guitar, electric 12-string guitar, pedal steel guitar, backing vocals, vocals on "One Way or Another" *

Lee Kerslake Lee Gary Kerslake (16 April 1947– 19 September 2020) was an English musician, best known as the longtime drummer and backing vocalist for the rock band Uriah Heep and for his work with Ozzy Osbourne in the early 1980s. Biography Early life a ...

– drums, percussion, backing vocals *

– bass guitar, Mellotron, electric piano, backing vocals, vocals on "One Way or Another" ;Production * Ashley Howe – engineer * Peter Gallen – engineer on tracks 1 and 7 * John Gallen – assistant engineer * Alan Corbeth – mastering at RCA Studios, London * Mike Brown and

Robert Corich Robert M. Corich is a remastering engineer and record producer, who started his career as an IBM mainframe operator, engineer and consultant where he wrote courses and books on the IBM mainframes and operating systems, often lecturing in these top ...

– remastering (1997 and 2004 reissues)

Charts

References

{{Authority control Uriah Heep (band) albums 1976 albums Bronze Records albums Warner Records albums