Black Sabbath - 13

Age of Pathos

Released on the 10^th June, but streamed over the last few days, like thousands and thousands out there I have been listening to Black Sabbath’s latest 13 and Ozzie’s long awaited return to the band after 35 years. I was asked today if I like it – the obvious question to address in this review – and I think I prevaricated far too much, though essentially I gave an appropriately paradoxical answer. I do and I don’t. As I said of single God Is Dead? it is both wonderful and ludicrous.

As someone who still recalls the brilliance of hearing that first album, aged 15, I can’t possibly retrieve the same ecstatic enthusiasm for this album that tries so hard to recreate the original sound, which it does so effectively. Interestingly as I write, I’m listening to fifth track Age Of Reason – very loud – and this is proving pretty damn cool as it is in many ways least like the music of Sabbath’s first LP which other tracks echo so closely, like opener End Of The Beginning. One thing I’ll say from the off: when Tony Immoni lets loose on any one of these eight songs it is beautiful to hear.

Part of my less enthusiastic response is in finding the lyrics preposterous. Perhaps when I was 15, semantics weren’t really an issue when it came to heavy music. The titles of four songs on 13 declare the pretentions of the pseudo-philosophising: End Of The Beginning; God Is Dead? Zeitgeist; Age of Reason. And the line Is this the end of the beginning, or the beginning of the end, losing control or are you winning, is your life real or just pretend...reanimation of the sequence, rewinds the future to the past....yada yada yada...and I’m chuckling knowingly rather than headbanging mindlessly.

I know this is the wrong approach! I know. Perhaps it’s also knowing so much about Ozzie these days – that reality TV programme; the interviews; seeing a clip of his live performance at Perth this year where his oblivion is worrying and pathetic - his singing live is dreadful. Knowing makes this contemporary packaging of the Black Sabbath sound too disingenuous for me.

But the thumping with harmonica and now Immoni scorching a solo on Damaged Soul playing still loud as I type pulls me in for that momentary escape back to times before, and it is enjoyable. Even far out. But the reality is it just makes me want to put that first album on – always the best and favourite without any question – and then dip in and out of the next three.

The album’s ending on a thunderstorm and tolling bell is neither satirically aware nor metaphorically significant. We clearly understand by now that much on this album is judicious pilfering from the past, and it will obviously be their last offering. This explicit echo from the start of their debut and iconic gem is a mistaken gesture in pathos.

So I’ve just put Age Of Reason on again, louder. 

Black Sabbath - 'God Is Dead?'

Nietzsche and PR

I’m looking forward to the release of the new Black Sabbath album next week. Of course I am. How can you not want to hear another work from the founders of metal?

Planet Rock has been giving considerable airplay to the single God Is Dead? It is wonderful. It is also ludicrous. It is wonderful in the way that it so clearly re-presents the Sabbath sound –  those neanderthal slow riffs and the guitar breaks that do just enough to be heavy. Then there’s Ozzie’s distinctive vocal. But it is ludicrous too in the way it seems to be aping that original sound. Ozzie’s vocals in particular seem to have an obvious disconnect with the rest of the music, presumably an add-on in the studio, perhaps like all the other parts, and perhaps like many other bands and their recordings. Maybe I’m wrong, but this certainly doesn’t sound like a live - and energised by that immediacy - performance. The polish undermines what ought to be Ozzie’s raw emotion. And as for asking ‘Is god really dead?’ Why the fuck should the hard man of rock give a toss. The dark worshipper of satanic suggestiveness shouldn’t give a flying beheaded bat’s pizzle whether god is alive or deceased. And asking the question would appear to counter a lifetime of not tossing.

I know all musicians approaching their own mortality have a problem re-presenting what made them vital in their youth. The Stones would seem to somehow just about achieve this – apart from Jagger trying to justify recent outrageous ticket prices by citing dubious claptrap about ‘supply and demand’, and bleating about the cost of funding a tour.

Maybe that’s why Ozzie allegedly fell off the drink and drugs wagon so recently. It couldn’t have been a PR stunt to posit some Sabbath street-cred ahead of the tour and release, surely?

If you haven't heard [well, you haven't been listening] you can here.

Top Fifty - Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath [1970]

Rain, tolling bell, thunder, drawl of a heavy riff, and slow bleak questions before the apocalypse strikes its shocked response Oh No,  Black Sabbath announces Black Sabbath, and the demons, wizards and devils therein are dark procreative forces announcing a new genre through this Satanic birthyell, or the vivaparous voice that is Heavy Metal God Ozzie Osbourne.

Raw as a pig’s hide kicked by a mad farmer’s boot in the wild black of night, the relentless ramrod riffs and largely monosyllabic lyrics pound out again and again the most sublime new testament of Rock. By the time we get to N.I.B. - 40 seconds in to be precise -

DAA DAA DAA DAA DAA DAA DAA DAA DAA DAA

the most memorably malevolent iambic pentameter in Rock is fully realised: OH YEAH!

Diablo Tony Iommi lays down his own straightforward but powerful incantations in dark worship at the altar of Blue Cheer, and Fiend Geezer Butler provides roars from other visiting daemons carried on the rumbling rolls of Beast Bill Ward.

I bought this album not really knowing who or what it was – but drawn by the cover – somewhere on a market stall in London. I played it for the first time, as memory serves, at the house of a female student friend and other likeminded 5^th year musical vampires where we sucked its fresh blood with relish. I do believe there was a collective and spontaneous headbang, but reality and myth merge after all these years.

I do know that its dark drones merged with simple melodic lines still thrills today. I might be wrong, but it seems to me that Paranoid has more acclaim, and War Pigs is the common choice for a fans’ anthem, but this debut raw assault on the senses has left its permanent mark on my musical hide and long listening ride.