More than 30 years after he left the band, Hensley is arguably still best known as a founding member of Uriah Heep, although he has since charted a radically different musical path.
There’s nothing remotely prog or even rock about Love And Other Mysteries, his first album for five years, for the most part a succession of unremarkable power ballads awash with cheesy Hallmark sentiments.
The stilted, sedentary emotions of (This) Bleeding House or The Girl In The Purple Dress are drippy in the extreme, all predictable chord changes, polite piano and the poetry of a sixth former who’s lost his rhyming dictionary. Compared to this, Jamie Cullum is a veritable Marilyn Manson.
Hensley wakes from his torpor on the sprightly Walk Away, with its Eagles country strum and close harmonies, but it’s a rare upbeat moment on what’s an otherwise dreary record.
