The title track is the cream of the crop here. While it pales in comparison to the more legendary tracks on here, it is still a solid track with excellent work from everybody involved, particularly Iommi’s excellent solo. “Lady Evil” is an awesome catchy track that is driven by Butler’s bassline. This is not the same Black Sabbath from 1970. Dio has one of his best vocal performances ever right here. The song eventually adds electric guitars and Dio switches it up to sound more aggressive. “Children of the Sea” is an acoustically-driven song at first, with a beautiful vocal performance from Dio. This sounds… epic? If Black Sabbath ever came close to power metal, it would be this album. While the Osbourne era was predicated by haunting atmospheres and sludgy, slow riffage, the Dio era opens up with a speed metal monster. ![]() The album opens up with the iconic “Neon Knights,” a massive departure from the traditional Sabbath sound. After five years of relative mediocrity (by their standards), the band sounds rejuvenated here. It is not often when bands are able to switch frontmen without skipping a beat, but Black Sabbath are among the few who were able to do it not just flawlessly, but triumphantly. On this day in 1980 Black Sabbath released Heaven & Hell, often seen as the peak of the Dio era. While there are some who would say Tony Martin had his own era with the five albums released with him on vocals, quite honestly while some of the material might be solid, none of it is iconic. That’s a 50-year career that is primarily broken up into two eras, the Osbourne era and the Dio era. They released this album, 13 in 2013, and then embarked on two more tours before disbanding for good in 2017. Then in 2011 the classic Black Sabbath lineup (minus Ward) reunited to record one more album and do at least one more tour. Then they went their separate ways again, and Black Sabbath recorded two more albums before becoming dormant for about 15 years. Iommi later reunited with Dio and Butler, and then they enlisted drummer Vinnie Appice for the incredible Dehumanizer in 1992. Then he left, and Black Sabbath began to see a slew of lineup changes where eventually only Tony Iommi was the constant member. They enlisted non-legendary vocalist Ronnie James Dio from Rainbow, recording two excellent albums between 19 in Heaven & Hell and Mob Rules. ![]() They released two relative duds of albums before Osbourne left to do his solo project. This legendary run from 1969-1975 helped usher in heavy metal as a legitimate music genre. They’ve arguably had as good of a run as any, releasing six quintessential heavy metal albums in the beginning of their career: Black Sabbath, Paranoid, Master of Reality, Vol 4, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Sabotage. The rest is history.īlack Sabbath has had a monumental career, with incredible highs and incredible lows. Four friends from Birmingham, England: vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi, drummer Bill Ward and bassist Geezer Butler wanted to create a heavy sound by adding extra distortion to blues riffs. It seems almost fitting to end this heavy metal album series with the one band who started it all: Black Sabbath.
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