By Andrew Bansal
During the last few months, heavy metal forefathers Black Sabbath have been enormously hyping up the release of their new studio album, simply titled ’13’. With this being the first Ozzy-fronted Sabbath studio album since 1978’s ‘Never Say Die’, as a fan I was initially excited about ’13’ but as the release date drew nearer, skepticism grew large about whether the album would hold water amongst the legendary Sabbath classics, how Ozzy’s vocals would sound, whether riff master Iommi still has the magic in his songwriting, and what the modern production values would do to the Sabbath sound. I found the album’s title and artwork to be rather unimaginative, but obviously, it being a Sabbath album I overlooked that flaw and was still curious about the music. I avoided listening to any of the ‘singles’ that were put out over the internet, and waited till I had access to the entire album to form my opinion about the new Sabbath.
To begin with, the classic doom is laid down hard and heavy on the opening track ‘End Of The Beginning’ as it boasts of some quintessentially ominous Iommi riffs. The song is delightfully slow in its first segment and then builds up gradually into a mid-tempo rhythm. The foot-stomping middle section of the song is enhanced further by a solid Iommi guitar solo, but the third and final part largely ruins the impact of the tune altogether, going into what sounds like something off of Ozzy’s solo albums. Classic Sabbath and Ozzy’s solo material certainly do not fit together with their respective musical styles, and this tune is living proof of that.
‘God Is Dead?’ revives the doom to a considerable extent. The songwriting is great, as it should be, but somehow the tune sells itself short with its overall sound. Iommi’s riffs and Geezer’s bass lines on this one definitely had the potential to sound massively heavy, but sadly they don’t, owing to the overtly modern production and Ozzy’s singing style. With that said, this might turn out to be one of the better live songs from this album because sans the compressed production, it should sound a lot heavier in the live setting.
‘Loner’, unfortunately, is a very generic track that doesn’t do anything to contribute positively to the album. Ozzy’s auto-tuned vocals are too dominant on this one, and if at all, the song is listenable only along with the rest of the album, not by itself, which makes its title rather ironic. After that, ‘Zeitgeist’ takes the listener down memory lane with a stark resemblance to ‘Planet Caravan’ off of the Paranoid album. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ll say the vocals are yet again the weak link in the song, and the guitar piece that forms last 75 seconds of the song while Ozzy is actually not singing, might just be its saving grace.
‘Age Of Reason’ is too repetitive with its guitar riffs and rhythm section for the most part, but does boast of some great guitar solos which renders the song as a repeat-worthy listen despite its excessive 7-minute duration. ‘Live Forever’ follows the exact same pattern, although it’s much shorter and as a result, more accessible. ‘Damaged Soul’ slows things right back down again, and is my favorite track on the album at the moment. It’s so much like Sabbath and at the same time not like Sabbath in many ways. It sounds organic, has more of a hard rock/Southern rock tinge to it, and this is the first and perhaps only sign of ‘change’ in the band’s music on this album, which otherwise simply attempts to recapture the old style that’s popular with the fans. ‘Damaged Soul’ is the only song that dares to differ, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it strikes an immediate chord not only with longtime fans but also with the skeptics and critics. The standard edition of the album comes to an end with another standard slow doom number called ‘Dear Father’, rather aptly summing up what this album is all about. The three bonus tracks do offer a good variation from the much too consistently flowing standard edition, and if you’re going to buy the album, I’d recommend getting the deluxe edition which includes the bonus tracks.
In my overall assessment of the album, I certainly don’t hate it by any means, and good chunks of it are extremely enjoyable. Thankfully, it’s not one of those cash grab attempts that you often see from older bands when they have nothing going on in their heads creatively and simply decide to put out a new album for the sake of doing so. Tony Iommi is called the riff lord for a reason, and this album yet again proves that the man can never run out of good riffs and songwriting ideas. Geezer lays down the bass as well as ever, and he hasn’t lost even one bit of his touch either. Fill-in drummer Brad Wilk’s inclusion on the recording has been well documented and criticized to death, but talking purely about his drumming he does a fair job on the album even though it doesn’t sound like he got to contribute any of his own ideas to the drum parts. The Bill Ward touch is sorely missing, and sadly all we can do about that situation is think about what could have been.
With all that being said, I’m extremely disappointed to report that Ozzy Osbourne’s vocals kill the impact of the album as a whole, with a style that’s more suited to his solo material. Modern tools and technology reigns supreme on the vocal layer of this album, with boatloads of auto-tune enhancing the Ozzman’s vocal lines. If he needs to use such copious amounts of assistance to make himself sound good on the recordings, I am fearing the worst when Sabbath come around to tour in support of the album later this summer. Don’t get me wrong, I am as glad as anyone to hear Ozzy sing on a Sabbath album after decades, but the tiredness in his voice is unmissable. To make things worse, Rick Rubin’s production stamp is all over this album and not in a good way, with it doing more harm than good to the overall sound.
With such an illustrious career forming their glorious past, the legends in Sabbath had nothing to prove, and there’s nothing they could do at this point that’d take anyone by surprise. But, based on the material on ’13’, it’s heartening to note that the musicianship remains strong, the songwriting ability is still there, even though the jury is still out on whether the band can pull it off in the live setting.
Rating: 7.5/10
Record Label: Vertigo/Republic
Release Dates:
June 10th 2013 (Europe)
June 11th 2013 (US)
Track Listing (Standard Edition):
1. End Of The Beginning
2. God Is Dead?
3. Loner
4. Zeitgeist
5. Age Of Reason
6. Live Forever
7. Damaged Soul
8. Dear Father
Links:
blacksabbath.com
facebook.com/BlackSabbath
twitter.com/OfficialSabbath
youtube.com/OfficialSabbath