Okay then, time to strap on your six-guns, tilt forward your hat in a menacing way, chomp down on that cee-gar (but I don't smoke!) and mosey on down to the Last Chance Saloon, to check out another album in my collection that really did not impress me on first or subsequent listens, and which I have filed away until now.
Personally, I feel it was a tragedy when the late Ronnie James Dio was fired from Black Sabbath. I like the Ozzy-era albums, but RJD really added a sense of majesty and wonder to the catalogue, bringing his own style of fantasy, epic songs, costume and great lyrics to a band which had, up to then, been pretty mired in a kind of ever-decreasing circle of similar black metal music. Which is not to say that I didn't like the previous albums --- “Vol 4” is a great album, and I love “Sabbath bloody Sabbath”, and of course there's the excellent “Master of reality”, not to mention “Paranoid”, but to me Sabs were stuck in something of a rut until Ronnie came along, and I felt he, in the parlance of TV and the movies, “revitalised the franchise”.
So I was sad to see him go, even though he would later make a triumphant return for one album nine years later. Sadder though was I to hear that his replacement would be Ian Gillan! Now, I'm a Purple fan, though not a big one, but I never liked anything Gillan put out with his own band, and his snotty claim on joining, at the second asking, mind you, Black Sabbath, that they should not be described as a heavy metal band, was a real slap in the teeth to their longtime fans (like me), in addition to being, well, how can I put this? Insane? Sabs not metal? You might as well say Maiden weren't metal!
So, the stage was set and the battlelines were drawn, and I was in a frame of mind, not surprisingly, to hate the new album, which turned out, as it happens, to be the only one Gillan did with Sabbath. I was not disappointed. Or I was, depending on your viewpoint. Essentially, I felt that Gillan had done as I had expected and feared, and ruined one of the godfathers of metal. I hated the album.
Born again --- Black Sabbath --- 1983 (Vertigo)
So, was I right to hate it? Did I give it a chance? Well, probably no to the second, with judgement (obviously) reserved on the first, as this is the main question we are here to find an answer to. To be fair, the first I heard from the new lineup and from the then-forthcoming album was at a rock festival in Dublin (yeah, we had the odd one --- think it was called Monsters of Rock. Or is that Donington? Well, something similar anyway) and it was a little hard to make out the music, but when I got the album I was almost glad I had had difficulty hearing it onstage, as it really sounded awful to me. Has time mellowed my opinion, changed it? Will this last listen redeem this lost lamb (well, wolf I guess) from the Black Sabbath flock? I wonder, I really do...
It starts off heavy enough, though I could do without Gillan's trademark annoying scream. Right from the off, I don't find his voice as strong as either Ozzy or Dio --- they're in a different class. I also note some similarities in the opener, “Trashed”, to a lot of Deep Purple material, particularly “Speed king” and “Highway star”. Is he involved in the writing? Let's have a look. Yes, but in collaboration with the rest of the guys. Still, you can certainly feel his influence on this track. Nice solo from Tony Iommi, little heavier and more contemporary than usual.
My concern, of course, is that Gillan would use Sabbath as a backing band, making it more of a case of Ian Gillan and Black Sabbath, but as the album goes on I'm getting that impression more and more. “Stonehenge” has a nicely atmospheric, dark opening, very reminiscent of Ozzy-era Sabbath, nice keys from Geoff Nichols, very prog-rock to be honest. It's a short song, and indeed an instrumental, but it at once fits in nicely and stands out from the usual Sabbath fare. Then we're into “Disturbing the priest”, a song written for the Madman if ever there was one. Gillan does an okay job on it, to be fair. It's very heavy, more screaming, a slower track than the opener, more a cruncher than a rocker. Although the title screams, as I say, Ozzy Osbourne, the song itself is pure classic Dio, and I could very easily hear RJD singing this one.
Another very short instrumental follows, more a collection of noises really, which goes under the title of “The dark” and leads into the longest song on the album, “Zero the hero”. At just over seven and a half minutes, it comes over to me as an attempt at a Led Zep copy, and I don't see it as a Sabbath song at all. Great extended guitar solo in the middle though. Very much overlong: the same basic melody goes all the way through, and there's little change as the song blunders on towards its conclusion. To be honest, I heaved a sigh of relief once it ended.
“Digital bitch” is a lot of fun, written apparently about Sharon Osbourne (sentiments I heartily concur with!), a more straight ahead rocker than really anything else on the album so far. A good song, but I would have to say not a great song. More than halfway through the album and nothing has really grabbed me by the throat up to now, as I would expect a Sabs album to. Whether it's the manic energy of Ozzy or the sumptuous vocals and sweeping lyrical themes espoused by Dio, I've always had my attention kept by any previous Sabbath album, and though I haven't heard the later ones with Ray Gillen or even Tony Martin, I find Gillan's vocal presence the least riveting I have heard on a Sabbath album.
The title track is a ballad, of all things, very bluesy, and the second-longest at just over six and a half minutes. Nice echoey guitar from Iommi and some really nice effective bass from Geezer Butler, and in complete fairness this sort of song does suit Gillan's voice, though I could just as happily hear Dio sing it (maybe not Ozzy); so far it's the best thing on the album, but is it too little too late? It is. “Hot line” is throwaway basic filler, while the closer, “Keep it warm”, is, well, more filler. Oh dear.
I would have to say that my original impression stays. While Iommi's guitar playing is as flawless as ever, the whole direction of Sabbath changed, for me, on this album, and not for the better. “Born again” can't hold a black candle to the likes of “Master of reality”, “Sabotage” or “Heaven and Hell”, and I'm not surprised Gillan didn't last as the singer: his style never seemed to mesh with the ethos and craft of Black Sabbath, and they soon parted ways. Hopefully before he had a chance to ruin the band.
Honestly, if this was Black Sabbath “Born again”, then I could recommend a backstreet doctor that could have performed a certain operation that might have saved us all some grief.
TRACKLISTING
1. Trashed
2. Stonehenge
3. Disturbing the priest
4. The dark
5. Zero the hero
6. Digital bitch
7. Born again
8. Hot line
9. Keep it warm