After writing the reviews for both Nativity In Black albums (Black Sabbath tributes) I decided I should write a review for an actual Sabbath album.
I only own two albums from the original Heavy Metal band, that are not compilations. The first one is Paranoid, a staple of any serious Classic Rock collection. Also you can't really be into Metal without owning that album. However, that's not the album I decided to review.
I decided to start reviewing Black Sabbath with their second most obscure album, and the last album with the band I consider Black Sabbath.
This album never should have been released. In fact Ozzy had already left the band, and the other three members had started working with Ronnie James Dio on what would become the Heaven and Hell album. Although after some discussion the group decided to try making one more album and see if they could recapture the old vibe. It didn't quite work, but they made one of their most unique albums.
In 1978 they released Never Say Die and then promptly fell apart, died, and released the album they in fact wanted to release with Dio, which was much better. However, that doesn't mean this album should be ignored. If you like Jazz, and I mean real Jazz, you may be interested in this one.
The title track starts the album off. It's pretty much the best commercial song on the album. In fact only one other song is in that precious 3:30 time limit of commercial success. I love the song Never Say Die, for one major reason. A Black Sabbath song that you can honestly dance to. It's not a dance song, or a slow song like Changes. This is more like a classic 50's style rock song that you might hear at a sock hop, or a bit poppy like early Beatles. Real classic Rock & Roll stuff.
Johnny Blade is the next track on the album. Very dark alley Jazz sounding. It's seedy in sound and really grimey in feel. It could kind of be considered proto Goth. I really like this one, in it's artistic capacity. From thethe first verse "Toutured and twisted, he walk the streets / People avoid him, they know the street's his own / Cold blade of silver, his eyes they burn so wild / Mean as a tiger, socety's own child", this song conjures up a victim of the wrong side of the tracks.
The second track flows so smoothly into the third that it's hard to figure out where one stops and the other starts. Junior's Eyes is listed as being 6:41 and when you tack that on to the 6:27 of the previous track it seems like a really big Jazz jam. This song isn't as good as the first two, and this is where the album starts to get shakey.
I swear that only Black Sabbath and Metallica can get away with having an average song length of five an half minutes on each album. A Hard Road is a bouncy track that comes in at 6:03, although the last minute or two are a bit repetitive for my likings. It would be an okay tune if it were done by someone other than Black Sabbath, but not that okay.
Shock Wave is okay. It sounds a bit like a filler track from Masters Of Reality or Vol. 4, but without the cool, heavy, scary sound that normally comes with a Sabbath song.
A very pretty, and totally out of place song, is Air Dance. I don't know how to describe this song correctly. It's like Zappa meets Bowie meets my Papa's Jazz collection. It's a really good song instrumentally, but it does not have that Sabbath feel or vibe.
Over To You picks the pace back up a bit, but only in a dragging your ass kind of way. Also what the fuck is with all the piano? I think if I had been in charge of the vinyl album cover production at the time, side two would have read Piano Side. There's nothing wrong with all the piano either. I liked it in Air Dance and I don't even mind Changes from a previous album, but Sabbath is not really a piano/keyboard band. They should have left that purely to Led Zeppelin.
The shortest song on the album is Breakout at 2:36. It's another really Jazzy kind of track, complete with a saxaphone this time even. It's a wicked instrumental, that sounds very jammy, and it seems to serve more as an intro for Swinging the Chain. Which is the last song on the album.
Bill Ward sings the final track, instead of Ozzy. This song is very much an old blues kind of song. Black Sabbath working on the chain gang would be the best way to describe it.
Over all this isn't a bad album, it's just a bad Black Sabbath album. If it were an album by Earth (when Black Sabbath was a Blues/Jazz band) it might be a different story. I wouldn't suggest this album to any Sabbath fan, but I might suggest it to someone that was looking for something dark, artsy and different.
5/10 - content
4/10 - production
6/10 - personal bias
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