It’s hit and miss, but it’s still better than almost everything from 1981 onwards. The title track has garage-band rawness Air Dance is – dare one say it – oddly beautiful. The final album of the original Ozzy era has a terrible reputation, but it’s a quirky and enjoyable record, as long as you don’t expect Sabbath Even Bloodier Sabbath. Of course, Gillan’s lyrics were awful and very un-Sabbath, but it was the best record he had been involved in since his time in Deep Purple. Actually, it’s pretty good: Ian Gillan, whose only recordings with the band these were, still had his voice, and the other three are pretty focused.

Born Again (1983)Īccording to Sabbath mythology, Born Again should have been smothered at birth. It’s no Master of Reality, but it was the best Sabbath album since the early 80s.

Cross Purposes (1994)įor the first time in more than decade, Sabbath sounded like a contemporary metal band, rather than a group trying to sound like a contemporary metal band (and on Cardinal Sin, Iommi and Butler gave Martin the kind of preposterously epic setting that Dio had deserved). Photograph: Larry Marano/Getty Images 12. Back Street Kids may back his claim, but most of the rest of Technical Ecstasy was a mess. Given it was recorded in June 1976, that suggests they were either way ahead of the curve, or that Butler is mistaken. Technical Ecstasy (1976)īutler claimed Technical Ecstasy was Sabbath responding to punk. It’s perfectly serviceable, but Martin was an identikit metal singer: he sings about Satan with all the menace of someone offering cheese samples at Morrisons deli counter. They can make the case, but they’re wrong. Some Sabbath loyalists make a case for Headless Cross being a neglected classic. It often felt, though, as if the rest of the band were sanding down their leader’s riffs to fit an 80s template. The first album with singer Tony Martin opened with an Iommi riff that offered hope of redemption: The Shining was more polished than, say, Wheels of Confusion, but it suggested Sabbath might be able to claw their way out of their hole. The riffs are conventional mainstream metal: it would have sounded perfectly of its time five years earlier, but by 1990 – with Ozzy Osbourne-era Sabbath being exhumed by grunge and stoner bands – something more like the band of 20 years before might have hit home a lot harder. The 15th Sabbath album doesn’t sound much like Sabbath at all. Geoff Nicholls, Tony Iommi, Dave Spitz, Eric Singer and Glenn Hughes in 1985.

Black Sabbath by Mike Stark