Black Sabbath: 13

Black Sabbath: 13

2013

Vertigo/Universal Records

 Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1.  End of the Beginning  2. God is Dead?  3. Loner  4. Zeitgeist  5. Age of Reason  6. Live Forever  7. Damaged Soul  8. Dear Father


This was a surprise...Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, and Geezer Butler reunite to put out a new Black Sabbath record.. Bill Ward declined participation, so they hire Brad Wilk from Rage Against the Machine to take his place... Brad Wilk does a fine, professional job but it would have been nice to have Bill here, his distinctive, plodding, yet swinging style is pretty key to band's success...

On the whole, though, this record is a lot more successful than I think anyone expected...I was kind of expecting something along the lines of one of the faceless solo records Ozzy has been putting out for the last 20 years...Buzzing guitars...Phoned-in vocals...No sense of history or importance...

Or even worse, I feared it may have something in common with one of those Tony Iommi iterations of Black Sabbath...As you can see from yesterday's post I don't own a single Black Sabbath album that dates past 1983...The last new Sabbath I bought was 1992's "Dehumanizer" Which I no longer own, but I remember the tape was really blue...

I can recall how surprising that album was too...No one was expecting Dio to come back, and neither Sabbath nor Dio had put out anything of note for a few years at that point....But I can recall popping in that blue-ass tape and sitting back while "Computer God' pumped through my speakers and thinking "I wasn't expecting it to work again like this...I mean, it's not 'Heaven and Hell' or anything but it's close enough..."

And that's pretty much what happened when I popped this one in...I wasn't expecting it to work again like this...I mean, it's not "master of Reality" or anything, but it's close enough for me...

It can't be "Masters of Reality"... These guys have aged 40 years since then...But it's still unmistakeably the work of the guys that made that album...Which is more than I can say for "Forbidden"...



 or "Black Rain"...

 
 or "Black Rain"...

 The opening track "End of the Beginning" has a signature Iommi doom-riff that immediately puts  a smile on your evil-loving face....And the smile gets bigger as you're moved  through various instrumental sections and the running time surpasses the 8 minute mark...Oh my God...This is the Black Sabbath that I grew up loving...And check out "Zeitgeist"...They might as well have named it "Planet Caravan 2: Battle Beneath the Planet of the Caravans"...But there's something undeniably cool to hear something that sounds like "Planet Caravan" in 2013...

Sure, it's the sound of a great band learning how to imitate themselves to at least give the illusion of recapturing their  past glories... But after all that us Black Sabbath fans have been put through we're grateful for the effort...The world needs Black Sabbath...How many Slo-mo Doom metal bands have popped up in the last few years, trying to fill the 70's stoner void the band has left in its wake...The people are starving for this shit...And as long as we're jonseing for it, at least we have the opportunity to get our nostalgic kicks from our original dealer...I think that last sentence was a metaphor or something...

"God is Dead?" is kind of irritating though...

I guess, in the end I can only compare this to last year's "That's Why God Made the Radio" by the Beach Boys...A once great band that seemed to end their discography on a totally unworthy album, gets back together decades later and puts out the final album their legacy deserves...Is it their strongest album? Hell no.  But it's close enough...

On that note let's check out "Age of Reason" by Black Sabbath...Enjoy...