Black Sabbath: 13

Those who feel Sabbath has been underrated in the 2013 polls, this is your chance to make an impact. While unfortunately fewer people are voting, it means your ballot will have more impact.

~~~ ILM METAL POLL 2013 - ALBUMS & TRACKS VOTING & CAMPAIGN THREAD~~~ (VOTING ENDS FRIDAY JANUARY 10th 11.59pm UK time/6.59pm EST) )

Maximum of 50 album votes/Minimum of 5.
Maximum of 20 tracks votes/Minimum of 5

Please vote by filling in the
Voting Form, copying your selections directly from the nominations spreadsheets:

Album Nominations Spreadsheet
Tracks Nominations Spreadsheet

stop it

No.

They might have rehearsed together in the same room (with cameras rolling), but there is no fucking way they made this album with everyone in the same room jamming together, not with everything that's at stake from a label perspective.

Actually they did record this pretty live. When I interviewed Iommi, he said it was the most live studio album they've made since the first one, and that Rubin made him do his leads first take and overdub the rhythm parts. He even wrote a guitar melody line that Rubin threw out. He said Ozzy was in the vocal booth while they were tracking. That none of them had worked like this in decades.

I'm not defending Rubin here, but it does sound like they went through some good effort to do this right.

this still holds up to my ears.

Age of Reason

I played this today and tbqfh, it holds up just fine. in fact, maybe even better, because there's no burden of expectations.

it's not perfect (Geezer's bass sounds weird, "AGe of Reason" has an Audioslave sounding riff), but most of the songs hold up to me. feel like the first three are a solid jump out of the gate.

I'll be playing this again this week I'm sure.

I like this album. Was quite shocked to read the first posts on this thread... Iommi is in great form, Ozzy sounds fine, I've never had problems with the bass sound. Ward is sadly missing, fair enough.

I mentioned upthread that I wrote a review, but I never posted it. Here's a link. I stand by it.