Man of Yesterday but with an Eternal Voice
B. Worth | 07/21/2008
(2 out of 5 stars)
"In my opinion, David Byron was the greatest hard rock vocalist ever. He deserves a comprehensive collection, unfortunately this isn't it. This release promised much but delivered little and could easily have been so much better. For starters, the final running order contains only one previously unreleased song ("What's Going On"). Why the advertised "Prince of Darkness" never made it on here has never been answered. Curiously, nothing was included from 'Rough Diamond', David's high-profile supergroup, immediately following his departure from Uriah Heep and has never officially been made available on CD.
These anthologies invariably aim to please everyone but end up satisfying no one. Sanctuary got really lazy and stingy with both the tracklisting (probably due to licensing issues?) and the oft-repeated artwork in the booklet (laziness?). Any music fan owning Byron-era Heep reissues, will undoubtedly be familiar with every image and printed word that appears in this package.
Its a shame that legendary material like his pre-Heep Avenue recordings, the Take No Prisoners outtake "Prince of Darkness", 'Rough Diamond' and the 1984 demos he recorded just prior to his death (with John Rabbit Bundrick), were completely and criminally overlooked. These would have fulfilled Sanctuary's alleged objective of a comprehensive overview of this under-rated performer.
There is so little available from the great man's career outside of Heep and this is a huge missed opportunity to put this right."