This weekend I was digging through my old cassettes and packing them up ready for the move. Whilst doing this, I stumbled upon a classic album that I hadn’t aired for well over five years. I dusted it off and slapped it in my walkman. Ten seconds later the familiar dirge riff of ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’ was assaulting my senses.
Yes, I’m talking about the mid-70s Black Sabbath album ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath‘ - an album overlooked by band and fans due to it’s flirtation with prog rock. I really like the light and shade on this album, the keyboards give the whole thing a load of texture that isn’t present on earlier albums. Sure, there’s no ‘Iron Man’, ‘War Pigs’ or ‘Paranoid’ on here but, that’s not to say it’s devoid of classic tracks. ‘Sabbra Cadabra’ is a personal fave. It was covered by Metallica in the 90s and it’s a damn fine, catchy tune. ‘Fluff’ is a chilled out instrumental. Yes, I said chilled out. ‘Spiral Architect’ is an epic using strings and the whole prog-hog. Ozzy’s voice is on top form and the classic line up Osbourne/Lommi/Ward/Butler are truly at their peak. I can only point you in the direction of the sound clips on Amazon.
I also found other ‘rock classics’ like Pearl Jam’s ‘Ten’ and Metallica’s ‘Ride The Lightning’. All take me back to my teenage metal years. I may review them all here. Yes, that’s decided - I’m going to sift through my collection of cassettes and review them all - that’ll give you something to read wont it?
The first album cassette I ever bought was And Justice For All by Metallica, which contains a song called ‘One’ which remains their best I’ve heard.
Those were the days.
March 13th, 2003 at 11:08 am
Whilst ‘One’ is a great track (total carnage war going on at the start), it is let down (as is the rest of ‘And Justice for all’) by shoddy production. New boy Jason Newsead’s bass is non-existent and the drums sound overly tinny and weak. If only they’d got the ‘black’ album producer, Bob Rock, in for Justice, it’d be one of the greatest metal albums ever. I particularly like opener ‘Blackened’ and the live favourite ‘Harvester of sorrow’. Interestingly, Metallica released an unproduced promo of that track that is absolutely blinding.
March 13th, 2003 at 12:43 pm