Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
At one point, you can almost catch yourself thinking, and with the greatest of respect to the legend and dearly missed Ronni James Dio, why oh why did Black Sabbath ever fracture and tear themselves apart? The answer quickly springs to mind and you are left lamenting what could have been during that period but like all good tales of good and evil, of heroes and villains, the Black Sabbath story is not finished yet as their stunning new album 13 will attest.
13 sees the return of iconic frontman Ozzy Osbourne to the Black Sabbath line up since the late 70s and the relish in his voice has not been taken away by those years of living in the shadows of the Birmingham foundries and metal works, the sheer force of nature he has been and continues to be.
The music, deep, blasting through time as if a thousand tonnes of T.N.T. were placed in the deepest mineshaft and then adding the blistering chain reaction of a gamma bomb on top is as always supplied by the legendary Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler/ However, Ozzy brings back a memory, a stirring so loud it is hard to ignore of a time when the God fathers of British Heavy Metal were siring metal progenies from the inner depths of Birmingham to all points on the compass. This timeless quality that Ozzy has had ingrained into him into his very soul and which oozes from every pore, much like the dirty festering soot that used to hang wantonly over the Birmingham and Black Country skyline on bad days is what has always made him such an attention-grabbing frontman, a vocalist who takes what Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler give him and turns into heavy metal gold.
God is Dead?, Zeitgeist, Live Forever and Damaged Soul could have all come of the Sabbath dark pen at any point during the first great incarnation of the band. The world of Metal has changed, so many sub genres have come along and the new breed of groups from Italy, France, Norway and even further afield that are waging war on the memory of British Heavy Metal may have found something they won’t be able to dislodge quickly, if at all.
Ozzy is back, Black Sabbath have returned, turn up the volume and shake the foundations, some things are meant to be played loud.
Ian D. Hall