Welcome to another “Album by Album Challenge.” For those that are new here, the “Album by Album Challenge” is where I take a band’s entire discography and listen to every album in order of release from front to back. With my unforgiving and well-aged ear, I call it how I hear it. In some cases, I find that what I once thought was good is actually pretty crappy and sometimes crap manages to age into something pretty kick ass. And in some cases, face melting is still just good ol’ face melting.
This time around I’m doing one of my most challenging Album by Album Challenges to date: The Black Sabbath catalog. That’s right, I have made it a point to sit down and listen to every official studio release by Black Sabbath from the 1970 debut to 1995?s Forbidden. This was a really fun challenge for me. While doing this challenge I found many pleasant surprises and I also found some things that I wish I would’ve never found. This challenge will be in a few different installments to cover the different singers of Black Sabbath.
For this installment I’m visiting two Black Sabbath albums that featured two different singers. The first being Born Again which featured Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gillan. The second album was the seldom addressed and often ignored Seventh Star album featuring the great Glenn Hughes. Two completely different albums sparking two completely different reactions from yours truly. Read on brothers and sisters. Read on.
Black Sabbath – Born Again
Release Date: August 7, 1983
The Good: Disturbing the Priest, Zero the Hero, Born Again,
The Bad: Trashed, Digital Bitch, Hot Line, Keep It Warm
The Indifferent: Stonehenge, The Dark
Ozzy Osbourne was quoted as saying, “Born Again is the best thing Black Sabbath has done since I left the band.” Well, this is coming from a guy who can’t figure out how to microwave popcorn on his own. The god awful artwork is only a hit as to what lies within this platter of craptasticness. Even as a kid when I heard this album I remember thinking, “Wow, this really sucks.” The opening song “Trashed” kicks off with an ear shattering scream from Ian Gillan that could only be matched by the awfulness of Vince Neil. “Keep It Warm.” Really? Talk about a horrible idea of a joke. The band couldn’t sound any less inspired or motivated on this album. I mean, I know I’m going to get a lot of shit for this but was this really the best that they could do after the amazing albums that they made with Ronnie James Dio? I know Ian Gillan sang for Deep Purple and all and I don’t mind his voice at all. I just don’t like it singing for Black Sabbath.
The songs themselves are completely forgettable and they sound totally rushed and not well thought out. There are a few saving graces on this album that are actually quite good. “Disturbing the Priest” is a killer song and “Zero the Hero” is one of the only really “rifftastic” songs on this album. The title track is a really killer song and it’s one that I could’ve totally heard Ronnie James Dio singing. Why the rest of this album couldn’t be this good is beyond me. It kinda makes me feel as if they just didn’t have enough quality material in them to pull off a really solid album. At most, they got three really great songs buried in a pile of crappy songs. It’s really too bad but I guess I’ll have to add these songs to a mix or something so that I remember to dig on them again.
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Black Sabbath – Seventh Star
Release Date: January 28th, 1986
The Good: In For The Kill, No Stranger to Love, Turn To Stone, Seventh Star, Heart Like a Wheel, Angry Heart, In Memory
The Bad:
The Indifferent: Sphinx (the Guardian), Danger Zone,
Seventh Star wasn’t actually supposed to be a Black Sabbath album. It was written and planned to be a Tony Iommi solo album but manager Don Arden thought that it should be called a Black Sabbath album in order to boost sales. Seventh Star was a commercial flop but in all honesty is one of the strongest post Ozzy/Dio albums I’ve heard. Nothing sucks about having Glenn Hughes on vocals and the rest of the band featured a stellar line up of Dave Spitz on bass and Eric Singer on drums. I completely ignored this album up until doing this challenge and boy was I blown away.
This album boasts a very bluesy feel ala classic Whitesnake which I feel may have been influenced by Hughes’ bluesy, heartfelt vocals. “In For The Kill” sucked me in right away and I just couldn’t stop listening from then on. The title track “Seventh Star” could have been a Dio era song without a doubt and “Angry Heart” just screams Rainbow and “In Memory” just may be one of the greatest album closers I have ever heard. While this album may not be considered a “true” Black Sabbath album, I consider this way more of a Black Sabbath album than that atrocious Born Again album. If anything, Iommi & Co. should’ve recruited Hughes instead of Gillan and maybe kept him on. I really could hear him signing a lot of those classic Sabbath songs, especially the Dio era songs. This is really a great album that was sadly ignored for so long. Now it’s one of my favorites.
Next and Final Installment of the Black Sabbath Challenge: The Tony Martin Era
Also check out:
The Album by Album Challenge: Black Sabbath (The Ozzy Osbourne Era)
The Album by Album Challenge: Black Sabbath (The Ronnie James Dio Era)
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