Uriah Heep - "Bird Of Prey"
1971
Some fifty-cent LPs you regret, most you don't. IT WAS ONLY FIFTY CENTS. Scoring The Best of Uriah Heep at the closeout sale at St. Paul's legendary Root Cellar Records back in '04 was arguably the best Kennedy coin gamble I've ever taken on a slab of vinyl. Uriah Heep was from the same Brit/heavy/metal cloth as Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. Like Sabbath they had some mystic occult mumbo jumbo going on, like Purple they had an organ and over-the-top vocals. Me, I eat this stuff up. Speed it up and substitute a lower-range vocal grumble and you have Screaming Trees, who I also love. Also, with Heep putting short songs on the A-side and longer (but not deeper) songs on the flip, I have almost all the Heep I need* in a single album.
And if you're going to buy The Best of Uriah Heep, you gotta get it on vinyl. The back cover features a handy chart that shows who was in/out of the band during its run. And that was in 1976 - early in Heep's run, it turns out - the folks over at Wikipedia were helpful enough to show in/out to present day. You are forgiven if you mix that chart up with the chart detailing the Lutheran Laestadian Divisions in America.
* "Almost" is the key word here. Weirdly, Uriah Heep's best song by far - "Stealin'" - is not included in this package!