I love this album and the sound is part of that. Even his drum style has changed - in the 70’s he was much looser, then he got stiff and this was the first album where he sounds so stiff and relentless. Bill Ward’s drum sound is similar to the sound of hammering on a sheet of 1/8″ thick steel. As a result, this is a muddy, bass-heavy album with non-existent cymbals or even treble. Rumour has it that Geezer Butler snuck into the studio and turned the bass up so high that it couldn’t be fixed in the mix. So: if this record is loaded with such amazing riffage and tunes, why was it so unpopular? Why did it almost destroy Black Sabbath as a band? Why did it rate so low, everywhere? The answer is simple to me - the production sucks. “Keep it warm, rat, don’t forget pretty pretty one that your man is coming home.” Rat? The final track is “Keep It Warm”, a midtempo song with rich vocals by Gillan, and more of that Engligh-as-a-second-language lyricism. Very similar to “Digital Bitch” in style. Yet this is a much darker beast, highlighted by a metal chorus replete with screams.Īnother fast rocker, “Hot Line”, is up next which the band used to play live. If I had to compare it to another song, it would be Deep Purple’s “Wasted Sunsets”, for mood and vibe. “Born Again” is, I guess, a fucked up blues, filtered through Tony Iommi’s echoey underwater guitar sounds. “Keep away from the digital bitch!” warns Gillan. Angry, vicious and brutal, this is a rock song for metal heads. “Digital Bitch” smokes from start to finish. Side 2 of the original LP begins with another fast scorcher, but still a much more straightforward song than anything on side one. Gillan sings his patented “English-as-a-second-language” style of lyrics: “Sit by the river with the magic in the music as we eat raw liver.” Raw liver? What the hell? Musically, this song is the definition of heavy metal. Lyrically it’s just about recording the album next door to a church and waking up the neighbors! You can’t tell that from Gillan’s hellish screams or Geezer Butler’s fluid, lyrical bassline.Īnother brief instrumental (“The Dark”) acts as in intro to “Zero The Hero”, the epic single, the most evil video the band ever made, and the riff that Slash (allegedly) ripped off for a little tune called “Paradise City”. “Disturbing The Priest”, the most evil sounding song on any Sabbath album, is actually anything but. Miracle, I won’t get trashed again.”Īn atmospheric instrumental called “Stonehenge” (a dark watery piece) seques straight into the biggest asskicker of the whole album. Narrowly escaping death, the drinking driver in question proclaims at the end, “Oooh, Mr. “It really was a meeting, the bottle took a beating, the ladies of the Manor, watched me climb into my car…” No question what this song is about – drinking, ladies, and fast cars. “Trashed”, a fast smoker, kicks you in the nuts right from the beginning, with Ian Gillan’s colourful storytelling. (Soon, he was out again and replaced by ELO’s Bev Bevan, whose picture is also included inside.) Gillan said he was expecting this to be some new supergroup, under a new name, and was surprised when it became the next version of Black Sabbath. Drummer Bill Ward, at this point an alcoholic and still reeling from the death of his father, but still managed to come back long enough to record this album. Gillan had just folded his self-titled band (the excellent Gillan) to rejoin Deep Purple, but the reunion failed to happen. In 1983, Don Arden (father of Sharon Osbourne) recommended that Black Sabbath tap Ian Gillan (ex-Deep Purple) as new lead vocalist replacing Ronnie James Dio. It’s an ugly duckling of an album, uglier even than its cover. I don’t know exactly why I love it so much. Now, years after first hearing this album, it is an indispensible part of my collection and my musical background. Soon other songs started to emerge from the muddy morass that is this album: “Born Again”, “Keep It Warm”, “Disturbing The Priest”. When I first owned it (on cassette) I really only enjoyed two songs, “Trashed” and “Zero The Hero”. BLACK SABBATH – Born Again(1983, 2011 deluxe edition)īorn Again is my favourite album of all time.
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