BLACK SABBATH - 13

On the latest Black Sabbath album, the members of the original lineup (minus drummer Bill Ward) tried to go back to their early years vibe. From this experiment, Ozzy got a rehab and we got a record that we can place, without any qualms, among the band’s first 6 classic creations. How often will we get it out and listen to it later, only time will tell. So far, after a few listens, 13 (2013) leaves me with an unexpectedly good impression; I find in it mostly everything I loved about the classic and definitive Black Sabbath lineup (the Dio formula seems to me like an excellent band, but a totally different one, the one with Gillan a failure, and about the ones with Glenn Hughes and Tony Martin, I’d rather not remember).

Of the 8 songs, Damaged Soul is by far the most inspired; this is when Black Sabbath fully manages to give me again that feeling I had when I heard the first albums. On the flipside, we have Dear Father and Zeitgeist. The latter probably aspires to be a sequel of the famous Planet Caravan, but the instrumental parts, atmosphere and lyrics are so similar that make it look more like a naïve copycat. Between these two extremes we find the other tracks, each with its moments of greatness, such as the grandiose riff in Age of Reason, the crushing atmosphere in the End of the Beginning and God Is Dead? culminating with the classic rhythm changes, or Ozzy’s performance on Live Forever, completed by the rather characteristic lyrics: “I don't wanna live forever / But I don't wanna die!”.

It is obvious that 13 is trying to sound in a certain way, because it bears upon its back the sacrosanct mummy of the band that practically invented heavy metal. However, this means it loses the naturalness of a record released by a living band that tries to move forward, even if it gets hopelessly lost - see Technical Ecstasy (1976) and Never Say Die (1978). Nevertheless, I would rather listen to Tony Iommi recycling his own riffs than one of the countless stoner/doom/occult/retro/proto/whatever metal bands that are still stuck on Master of Reality (1971).

Gedi Nota: 9