Black Sabbath - 13

On November 11, 2011 [11-11-11], the four original members of Black Sabbath – Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Ozzy Osbourne, and Bill Ward – announced to the world they were reuniting to record their first album together since 1978’s Never Say Die, to be followed with a world tour in 2012.  But this is Black Sabbath, and with all things Sabbath nothing is ever that easy.  Shortly after the reunion announcement Tony Iommi was diagnosed with lymphoma.  With the passing of Ronnie James Dio in 2010 [stomach cancer] on his mind, Tony felt like he was a goner.  Shortly after Tony’s diagnosis went public, Bill Ward dropped a bomb of his own.  He wasn’t feeling the love financially.  He told the world he wasn’t presented with a “signable contract.”  So Bill bailed on the reunion, just as he did when asked to play drums for Heaven & Hell.  Rumor has it there are other reasons Bill isn’t on 13, but I won’t go into them here.  There are folks close to the band who know, but they aren’t talking and I’m not asking.  But the big question was this – did the doctors detect Tony’s lymphoma in time, or was it already too far gone like Dio’s cancer?

Tony started aggressive chemotherapy and radiation treatments right away.  The album would have to wait.  Tony responded well to treatments, and he got the okay from his doctor to work, but only if he didn’t overly tax himself.  So instead of working on the songs in Los Angeles, Ozzy and Geezer went to the UK so as not to tax Tony’s energy too much.  When Tony was well enough, everybody went to Los Angeles to record with Rick Rubin.

Expectations.  I didn’t have any for 13.  I didn’t expect the album to be made.  I am convinced that if Ronnie James Dio was alive today, there wouldn’t be a new Black Sabbath to listen to, enjoy and write about.  The guys tried to record an album in 2001 – they never finished it; they just “stopped.”  With Tony’s illness I didn’t expect them to finish the album.  But having stared death in the face, I credit Tony’s tenacity in getting something done before he died.  The best news of all is that he didn’t die.  He’s alive and says he feels great, but lymphoma being what it is Tony will be living with it for the rest of his days.  Until it was announced that Brad Wilk was going to play the drums, I had no idea who was going to get the gig.  Ozzy’s drummer Tommy Clufetos played three shows with Sabbath in 2012, and from the video clips I’ve seen and heard he played very well [Bill who?].  Would Tommy get the gig?  And then there’s Ozzy – how’s he going to sound?  He sounds pretty rough in live situations these days, but how would the record sound?

First Impressions.  No instant classics here, but the sludge is back.  This is a lean, mean Black Sabbath with something to prove.  Tony proves once again [as if we needed any further proof] he is an assassin.  Geezer’s bass does what it always does – it keeps up with Tony’s riffs every step of the way.  When Tony takes a solo, Geezer’s fat bass sound fills in the holes perfectly.  Brad Wilk’s drumming fits in well on 13. There are hints of songs past [see below].  Usually, if I don’t like a song within 10 seconds of hearing the opening notes, I never will.  I don’t have that problem with any of the songs on 13.  I won’t feel the need to hit the “skip” button on my CD player.  The lyrical content from the days of old is still there – fear and loathing of politics, corruption and greed, crises of faith, drugs, alienation, questions of theology, distaste for religious institutions, and space travel.

I wasn’t sure what 13 would sound like.  I knew that Rick Rubin wanted the band to challenge themselves to sound like they did in the early days, like “what would your second album sound like”?  Rubin wanted it “raw,” but how raw?  To these ears, the album sounds somewhere between Master of Reality and Vol. 4 [or maybe even Sabotage].  I don’t hear many overdubs either.  Instead of layer upon layer of riffs [think Fused or The Devil You Know], I hear one, maybe two guitar tracks per song.  That being said, Tony Iommi still has the ability to create skull crushing riffs that would scare Satan shitless.  Geezer Butler’s lyrics are still full of doom and gloom.  Ozzy sounds good.  Drummer Brad Wilk isn’t as nimble as Bill Ward used to be, but I’m not sure Bill Ward is either.  This album definitely does NOT suck. 

End of the Beginning – This opening salvo has the feel of the song Black Sabbath.  The riff is loud at the beginning, repeated quietly while Ozzy sings, then full volume again.  This is Sabbath doing a doom crawl at the get go, as if to tell the world “hey, we invented this stuff.”  The tempo picks up at 2:40.  Deadly solo at 4:42.  The repeating guitar figure for the last couple of minutes reminds me of Dirty Women.

God Is Dead? – In 1882 Nietzsche made the assertion that “God is dead.” For all those who think Sabbath are a bunch of devil worshipers, Ozzy sings he doesn’t believe that God is dead.  If I was producer for a day, I wouldn’t have two long songs in a row to begin the album [a minor gripe].  I’d put this song somewhere in the middle [perhaps after Age of Reason].  Geezer has a huge bass sound on this one.  Brad Wilk makes me forget about Bill Ward starting with this song.

Loner – NIB comes immediately to mind when I hear this.  I defy any of the Sabbath faithful to NOT yell out “Oh yeah!” at the appropriate time.  J Vicious solo at 2:56 and another one at 4:21 to close out the song – I like it! 

Zeitgeist – Two words – Planet Caravan. 

Age of Reason – This one keeps growing on me.   I like this one quite a bit.  They need to play this one live – a lot!

Live Forever – This one reminds me on Hole in the Sky, but just a little.  "I don't want to live forever, but I don't want to die."  What’s it going to be, Ozzy?  You can’t have both…

Damaged Soul – Big departure - Sabbath plays the blues!  Before they were Black Sabbath, before they were Earth, they were the Polka Tuck Blues Band.  But if Tony, Geezer and Ozzy played any blues [as I know them], I haven’t heard it.  I think the one thing that comes closest to this would be Warning from the first album.  The last time I heard Tony play music this overtly bluesy was Heart Like a Wheel [from Seventh Star, 1986].  Ozzy blows the harmonica from Hell.  I’m loving this one…  Of all the songs released this one sound the least like any of the others.  I’m surprised it made the final cut rather than appearing as a bonus track.  I would have thought Methademic or Naiveté in Black [or both] would have made the final cut.  This is a fine blues, but if blues doesn’t turn your crank, this song won’t change your mind.  This is my favorite from 13 so far [End of the Beginning is a close second].  I like to hear God Is Dead? immediately after this one.

Dear Father – Geezer is the Catholic of the bunch, and he is rightly pissed off at pedophile priests here.  As a molestation victim says to this priest:  You have taken my life/Now it’s your turn to die!  A very heavy song with tons of energy, this is a good way to end an album.  The song ends with rain, thunder, and a ringing bell – just like the beginning of Black Sabbath.  The circle is complete.

Methademic – Or perhaps the circle isn’t quite complete – not yet.  This is Bonus Track #1.  It has an acoustic intro, which back in the day would have its own name [like Orchid or A Bit of Finger].  This is one of the faster songs.  It’s pretty easy to guess the subject matter.

Peace of Mind – Bonus Track #2.  This is the only song under four minutes.  This one is all groove – nothing’ wrong with that.  But it has an “unfinished” feeling to it.  When the song comes to an end I expect it to go on for at least another verse.  Not only that, this song has no guitar solo.  I don’t know if I can think off the top of my head of any other Black Sabbath song that doesn’t have a guitar solo.

Pariah – Bonus Track #3.  This could be the flip side of Loner.  Same tempo and it has practically the same subject matter, only it’s in the first person instead of third person.  “I’m not your savior/I got no wings to fly/’Cause you’re Pariah/Don’t look to me when your life is over…”

Naiveté in Black – When I was growing up I thought NIB meant either Nuns in Black or Nativity in Black.  There are two Sabbath tribute albums called Nativity in Black, but alas NIB was just a description of Bill Ward’s pointy beard [like the nib of a fountain pen].  This title is a play on the Nativity in Black thing.  I’m glad the guys have a sense of humor about such things.  I was told by my friend Lorch [from the Iommi message board] to expect this one to sound like Time Machine [from Dehumanizer].  And now having heard it, he’s right on the money.  It’s a good one…

Lasting Impressions.  I’ve lived with 13 for a week and here’s my final verdict.  I would put 13 on par with Master of Reality.  Time will tell if 13 is a masterpiece, but it’s pretty damn good.  But perhaps Ozzy & Co. have finally made their Sgt. Pepper.  Black Sabbath set the bar very high with their first six albums.  After a week of listening, there still isn’t a song I would skip [including the bonus tracks].  That’s not something I can say about Sabbath Bloody Sabbath [Who Are You], Vol. 4 [St. Vitus Dance], Sabotage [Am I Going Insane (Radio)], Technical Ecstasy [half of the album], or Never Say Die [half of the album].  They borrowed from their past, but after being in existence in one form or another for over forty years, who wouldn’t?  Ozzy’s voice stays within it comfort zone.  Geezer and Brad Wilk jelled very well as a rhythm section.  Tony Iommi is still untouchable at what he does.

A few years ago there was a spoof in The Onion about the state of rock music, to wit:

"We who believe in the immortality of rock took a vow 30 years ago that we would never release this incredibly powerful force unless we faced a Day of Reckoning—and that day has come," said Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi, one of the chosen few who helped forge the Secret Vault to Save Rock and Roll, at a press conference in the Welsh highlands. "Just look at the pop charts, and you shall know I speak the truth."

"Let's give rock and roll its fucking balls back."  

The “incredibly powerful force” referred to in this spoof was an unheard riff recorded by Jimmy Page that was hidden in a “mystic, impenetrable vault.”  One look at today’s Billboard Charts and you can see the lameness of today’s music, given the popularity of such people as Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Mariah Carey, Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Kanye West or any other “singer” who features another “singer.”  With 13, Tony Iommi has reached into his own vault and given rock its balls back.

Is this the last we hear from Black Sabbath?  Ozzy and Geezer have both expressed interest in doing it again, and I’m sure Tony would do it.  But this is Black Sabbath – nothing is that cut and dried.  If I was a betting man, I’d say this is the last one.  Ozzy’s solo career has this annoying habit of getting in the way [$haron].  I hope I’m wrong – I could stand to have another album sound like this one [or better].  But if 13 is the last Black Sabbath album, this is a good way to call it a career.  Well done, gents!

Favorite tracks – Damaged Soul, Age of Reason, End of the Beginning, God Is Dead?

Black Sabbath

I have to tread carefully whenever I write about Black Sabbath.  I have quite a few friends in cyberspace who are the hardest-core Black Sabbath fanatics.  Black Sabbath is to them what the Beatles are to me - it's their favorite music, and they're extremely knowledgeable about it.  So with that said, here I go...

On Feb 13, 1970 [Friday the 13^th!], Black Sabbath unleashed their debut album on an unsuspecting public.  The band Black Sabbath came from the remains of two bands – Rare Breed [with Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler] and Mythology [with Tony Iommi and Bill Ward].  When these four guys came together, it was under the name of the Polka Tuck Blues Band.  They simplified things and changed their named to Earth.  There’s the oft-repeated story of how they got the name Black Sabbath.  Their rehearsal spaces were across the street from a movie theatre.  The movie that was playing was Boris Karloff’s Black Sabbath.    Geezer Butler noted that people would pay money to have the crap scared out of them, so at his instigation they adopted the name of the Karloff movie for the new name of their band.  They started out as a twelve-bar blues band that was influenced by the likes of Cream and the Jimi Hendrx Experience.  They just wanted to be louder so people would shut up and pay attention to the music during their shows.  During their time, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple were often considered "heavy," but the difference between those bands and Black Sabbath was a bass that had a dominant, leading sound.  That's what Geezer Butler brought to the band, and he's one source of the "heaviness" of Black Sabbath's sound. 

Tony Iommi and his riffs are the beginning and ending of all things Sabbath..  Tony Iommi’s greatness lies in the almighty riff.  Regardless of whoever else happened to be in Black Sabbath, the bedrock of every Black Sabbath song is the riff.   I can’t think of many memorable Sabbath solos, but there are many memorable Sabbath riffs.  Then there is the detuning.  The last day of the last time Tony Iommi worked a “day job” he lost parts of the fingertips on two fingers of his fretting [right] hand in an accident on the job.  He fabricated prosthetic fingertips so he could play without pain.  He used the lightest strings he could find [banjo strings at first].  He also detuned his strings to ease the tension on his fingers.  Detuning gave Sabbath a heavier sound.  He couldn’t get that effect with standard tuning and heavy gauge strings.  Lyrically, Black Sabbath was not about what many of their contemporaries were about, namely peace, love and hippie shit.  These guys [usually Geezer Butler] wrote around more bleaker aspects of life - drugs, war, the occult, the end of the world, and paranoia.  I guess growing up in Birmingham, England does that to people.

After they got a recording contract with Vertigo, the band had one day to record their album.  According to Tony Iommi, it was like another gig.  They went into the studio, banged out their tunes, and then went to Switzerland the next day to play a gig.  Ozzy’s voice sounds a bit rough because they had been gigging a lot prior to their studio date.  Also during the recording, Tony’s main guitar [a Fender Stratocaster] had a pickup stop working.  In those days one didn’t just replace a malfunctioning part – you had to get a new guitar.  Faced with this problem Tony switched to his backup guitar, a Gibson SG.  He has been playing Gibson SGs and custom SGs made by other luthiers ever since [SG Lou Moritz, for one :-)].  As for the record itself, it’s a crystal-clear sounding recording.  It doesn’t sound sludgy like Paranoid or Master of Reality.  Tony’s guitar is in one channel [right]; Geezer’s bass the other [left], the vocals and drums are in the middle.  Musically, one can hear jazz and blues influences all over the album.  It sounds like it was recorded mostly live with minimal overdubs

  

Black Sabbath - I often describe the opening chord to A Hard Day’s Night as the “big bang of the British invasion.”  Black Sabbath, the first song from the album and the band with the same name, has the same effect.  The album starts with a ringing church bell, and a thunderstorm followed by the three-note blast that opens Black Sabbath - this is the “big bang of heavy metal.”  It marks the birth of a genre.  To my knowledge [I could be wrong], popular music had stayed away from using the tritone, the diabolus in musica that had been avoided since the Middle Ages.  Tony Iommi didn’t set out to make evil music – he just thought that combination of notes sounded cool.  The story itself comes from Ozzy and Geezer.  It’s a cautionary tale about messing with the occult.  According to legend, Ozzy loaned Geezer a book about the occult.  Geezer read it, went to sleep, and when he awoke there was this black figure at the foot of his bed.After Ozzy’s last scream of “No! No! Please! No!” [He really does sound like he’s scared shitless] Tony’s wah-wah drenched guitar sounds like it’s sucking Ozzy down into the pits of Hell.  

Black Sabbath

The Wizard – It starts out with Ozzy’s harmonica, then the crushing riff from Tony Iommi.  The Wizard isn’t an evil guy.  Everybody is happy when The Wizard is nearby [“He turns tears into joy/Everyone’s happy when the wizard walks by…”], he makes clouds go away, and he makes demons and their evil power go the other way whenever he’s nearby.  He’s a benevolent Gandalf-like character.

Wasp/Beyond the Wall of Sleep/Bassically/N.I.B. – Sabbath was in the habit of giving the introductions to their songs [and the codas as well] their own names.  So it is with Wasp. On the American version of the album [my copy is part of the “Black Box”] the songs here are bound together as one song that’s almost 10-minutes long.  After 38 seconds of Wasp, Tony starts the riff for Beyond the Wall of Sleep.  The lyrics are supposedly based on the H.P. Lovecraft story of the same name.  In that story, a hick from the Catskills is locked away in an insane asylum.  While he’s sleeping he’s attacked by nightly visions of “otherworldly” things.  This is not your usual pop song fare.  At 2:30 the Wasp theme picks up again until 2:47, when Ozzy starts singing again about the Wall of Sleep.  The song fades out with just Bill Ward’s drums, and then segues into Bassically. Bassically is a Geezer Butler bass solo that links Beyond the Wall of Sleep and N.I.B.  Apparently Geezer doesn’t like bass solos, and yet here he is playing one.  It’s a short solo, one that ends with Geezer playing the N.I.B. riff, a skull crushing riff if there ever was one.  Contrary to what I thought in the early 1980s, N.I.B. is not an acronym for ‘Nativity in Black’ or ‘Nuns in Black.’  The title refers to Bill Ward’s beard, which was in the shape of a fountain pen’s nib.  The name is a Sabbath inside joke.  Of course, the name has nothing to do with the song.  N.I.B. is a satanic love song, by which I mean Lucifer fell in love for the first time and tried his best to persuade the object of his affections to come with him [“My name is Lucifer, please take my hand…”].  But did Lucifer get the girl? [“Now I have you with me under my power/Our love grows stronger now with every hour…”]

Wasp/Beyond the Wall of Sleep/Bassically/N.I.B.

Wicked World – A short song by Sabbath standards, Wicked World is a bit of social commentary.  The lyrics say it all – the world is a bad place [“The world today is such a wicked place…”].  People are fighting wars, just barely getting enough to eat with the jobs they work, and they’re dying of lots of diseases despite Man’s ability to land on the moon.  Of note, this is the only song Tony recorded with his Stratocaster before the pickup on the guitar crapped out.  The intro sounds like a jazz record [thanks to Bill Ward’s hi-hat swing intro], but after close to a minute Tony picks up the riff which Geezer doubles.

A Bit of Finger/Sleeping Village/Warning – As with Wasp/Beyond the Wall of Sleep/Bassically/N.I.B., these songs are all bound together as one. This group of songs starts with an acoustic guitar and a Jew’s harp [A Bit of Finger], then at 0:54 the electric guitar kicks in the Sleeping Village riff.  The Sleeping Village instrumental continues until 3:46, where Geezer starts playing a doomy bass riff to start Warning.  At 7:08, Tony starts to solo…and solo…and solo.  He kept up the soloing until 12:48, where he starts another riff when Geezer and Bill Ward join him.  Except for the opening riff, there’s nothing doomy or scary here – it’s got a jazzy feel.  Ozzy starts singing again at 13:26 to the accompaniment of the opening riff.  Warning is not a Sabbath original.  It came from Aynsley Dunbar’s Retaliation, but it’s a good cover.  If memory serves, this would be the last time a cover would appear on a Black Sabbath album.

A Bit of Finger/Sleeping Village/Warning

Evil Woman – This was Black Sabbath’s first single.  It’s a cover first done by an American band named Crow.  Nothing to see here…move along.

When Black Sabbath was new in 1970, critics hated it – now it’s a classic.  When they started, Black Sabbath was a blues/jazz-based band, and you can still hear a lot of that feel in most of these songs. The next two Black Sabbath albums [Paranoid and Master of Reality] is where the blues and the jazz make way for the heaviness and the sludge. IMHO, the only “scary” song out of this collection is the title track, but the band established the heavy metal template here.  The influence of this album is immeasurable – heavy metal was born here.  Black Sabbath is a dark, gloomy, loud masterpiece that forever altered the musical landscape.