Black Sabbath
13
Yes, it's here - a new Black Sabbath album, with Ozzy! I haven't listened to any Sabbath outside of the first two albums, so when I heard that they'd brought back the old lineup (albeit with the Audioslave drummer standing in for Bill Ward) I was pretty excited. Sabbath are pretty much the only metal band I listen to that have clean vocals, and given the poor quality of the lyrics, that's a testament to how great the band are musically. I did worry, though, that they might be past it - after all, given recent releases by Billy Bragg and Bob Dylan, it seems like this is the year that the old greats die off. On those first two records, Sabbath were the closest I've heard to a jazz-metal band. they had that looseness, that space between the instruments - listen to War Pigs, Black Sabbath or Hand of Doom, then to something by Sonny Rollins or Coltrane; do you hear the space between the lead instruments and the drums? the question for me was, would they still have that indefineable Sabbathness, 43 years after they released their genre-defining debut?
The answer: sort of.
13 gets off to a flying start, with the deliciously heavy groove of End of the Beginning. There's a good guitar solo, a nice fat riff, and Ozzy's unique vocals floating over the top. If the opening track is anything to go by, then this will be one hell of an album.
The intro to second track God is Dead? is reminiscent of the band's classic song Black Sabbath - possibly the best song of their entire career - but that's where the similiarities end. To me, this song just sounds like Sabbath-by-numbers.
Fortunately, it's followed by the altogether better song Loner. This entire album sounds like classic early Sabbath - if this album had been released in 1973, it would have fit right alongside Black Sabbath and Paranoid - but this song more than any other sounds like it came from that era. It has everything that made those first two albums great - chunky, solid riff; excellent drumming; shite lyrics about a social misfit - but it never sounds like the band trying to rehash an old formula. Rather, Loner sounds new, it sounds vital - as if Paranoid had just come out.
After Loner comes acuostic interlude Zeitgeist - the less said about that, the better.
Age of Reason is perhaps the best track so far - heavy-as-fuck riff, socially conscious lyrics,simple yet effective rhythm playing and of course, the all-important Iommi solo (and a really great one - the man who invented metal is still one of the most talented lead guitarists in the genre).
Live Forever is a meditation on mortality, given added impact by Tony Iommi's recent cancer diagnosis. Fortunately, there's no danger of the track becoming depressing or wallowing in self-pity; if there's one thing Sabbath don't do, it's mope. This song is a proper Sabbath song, and Iommi's blistering solo sounds like the work of a man with a lot of fight in him. Here's hoping he kicks cancer's arse.
Musically, the rest of the album follows the same formula that made the first two Sabbath albums great. The deal with a wide range of topics (not surprisingly, given Sabbath's history of intelligent, if rather poor, lyrics): Dear Father is an attack on the Catholic Church's child-abuse coverup (apparently you still go to Hell if you're gay, but not if you fuck kids - not sure how that works); Methademic is about drug addiction; and Dirty Women is about...well...that one's kind of self-explanatory. To be fair, though, that last one isn't the kind of Def Leppard-style testosterone overdose that the title makes it sound like.
Basically, Sabbath are back, and as good as ever. Buy this album.
Rating: 8/10
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