A sizeable offering of doom and dread that re-affirms Black Sabbath's position as metal musics most reliable landmark
I don't remember hearing much about this album when it came out, which strikes me as odd now considering its relative importance. The other guys from Sabbath had been keeping relatively busy with other projects (most important to me was the excellent The Devil You Know album), but Ozzy wasn't exactly making waves with his solo stuff anymore, although truthfully he stopped releasing good albums after Randy Rhoads died. Maybe 13 came and went quietly because everyone expected a Sabbath reunion to happen at some point and we were just glad to get it over with?
The kings of dinosaur metal aren't so easily fobbed off, however -- 13 is a chunky, full-figured record, clocking in at just under an hour, not counting the bonus tracks (which I stupidly assumed were just part of the normal album unto just now). You might think it'd be a little sad to see these guys recording almost exactly the same album they've been recording for their whole lives, but Sabbath have such an honest and unassuming aura about them that if never feels like they're repeating themselves just to "sell out" or something -- they do the same thing here that they've done on every album: bury you alive in dirty, bluesy riffs while Ozzy wails about eating bread. Wait, what?
Silly lyrics aside (welcome to metal), 13 comes out of the gate strong: "End of the Beginning", "God is Dead?", and "Loner" are an amazing opening set, with "God is Dead?"'s insanely good chorus and "Loner"'s stacked chords that sound straight of 1970. The boys kind of lose steam afterwards and never manage to replicate the chunky goodness of those opening tracks, although "Damaged Soul" comes damn close. There are some quieter ballads breaking up the onslaught that are also pretty weak, and despite "Zeitgeist"'s interesting lyrics the never do more than act as intermissions for the main event -- who listens to Black Sabbath for the ballads, anyway?
The other odd thing about this album is the production, coming to us from the "Lord of the Loudness War", Rick Rubin. While most people aren't a fan of the production on 13 (and as someone who normally hates this "brickwalled" sound) I actually don't mind how this album sounds. The guitar is phat, the drums are big, and you can actually hear the bass! For Sabbath's lower-register sound I think 13 sounds mostly ok, with the weirdest instrument definitely being Ozzy -- he sounds almost too lucid, maybe a bit auto-tuned or something, although since he hasn't sung in a couple dynasties I'm not used to his voice. In any case, 13 is a disc that reassures us that the old fogeys aren't quite out of energy yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment