Black Sabbath “13” Universal Republic/Vertigo
After years of clamoring by fans and teasing by the band themselves, now we have in our hands the first full Black Sabbath album with new material featuring iconic front man and “Prince Of Darkness” Ozzy Osbourne! While the world at large was excited to hear the news of the metal icons stepping into the studio there was understandable nervousness with the news that original Sabbath drummer Bill Ward would not be taking part and was in fact leaving the band due to contractual disputes. I am happy (and relieved) to say that the band was able to find a competent replacement in Rage Against The Machine’s Brad Wilk.
Much of the new material harkens back to Sabbath’s early classic material, with the opener “End Of the Beginning” being reminiscent somehow of both “Black Sabbath” and “Hand Of Doom”. All of the hallmarks are there, Geezer Butler‘s rock solid bass complimenting Tony Iommi‘s combination of eerie open chords and heavy crunch when necessary. The voice of Ozzy Osbourne does seem to have gathered the tiniest bit of dust, but for a man nearing senior citizen age, he still sounds great.
The album’s only radio single so far “Is God Dead” finds the band at their spookiest best. While some have decried the lyrics as being ham-handed or, god forbid, cheesy, yours truly feels as though this is just the way that Geezer Butler has always written and good for him for sticking to it! There are some truly heavy breakdowns in the album as a whole, with this song being probably the standout epic for me.
The middle part of the album does tread into a tad repetitious territory with some of the new songs sounding like, at least musically, retreads of material already released. That is not to say they are bad, this is Black Sabbath we’re talking about after all. I particularly like the track “Zeitgeist”, mainly because there are tongue in cheek references to the science community which betray some of the band’s distrust in at least some part of that.
The concluding songs of the album’s other half seem to all revolve around spirituality, almost acting like the band’s manifesto of belief or lack thereof. In fact, the album’s closer “Dear Father” seems to be an indictment of the Catholic church and their handling of the child molestation scandals that have rocked them for years. All in all, I think most Black Sabbath fans will appreciate this album for what it is: masters of the craft showing us all that they can still teach newer bands a thing or two about putting out respectable work. All hail Sabbath!
