Black Sabbath: 13

Last night, tho: magical. His handlers clearly cleaned him up for this Sabbath tour. Dunno what they did to get him straight; but I gonna be honest, he's kinda back! and it's kinda damn magical!

"Under the Sun"
"Behind the Wall of Sleep"
"Into the Void"
"N.I.B"

performed in fantastic fashion by Ozz, Geez, and Tony. On a beautiful Friday evening. With a shit ton of fellow Sab fans complely losing their mind.

Stormy I'm glad the show was this weekend was great, sorry I missed it, but you totally exaggerate about Lollapalooza. Yes he faltered somewhat in second half of the set, but it wasn't how you described. Having observed him in the last decade, it's amazing he can even walk and talk let alone sing halfway decently. I was near the front, perhaps too busy losing my mind. There's plenty of video footage though, and it was far, far from a sham. It makes sense that they'd be better now though, with that many more gigs under their belts. It sounds like it's too much though, they're getting burned out. Geezer is saying he's too old to be playing every night. Agreed, they're old, well, geezers, and they shouldn't be expected to tour like a bunch of 20-somethings. In Iommi's interviews, however, he says he's having a blast, and has no idea how long he'll be around so he's enjoying it while he can. I'd say that's the main point here. If nothing else, Tony fucking Iommi is putting it out there every night, and the man is sick with cancer. He's probably going to die, maybe in six months, maybe a few years. I really hope he doesn't, but he is NOT in remission as far as we know. So all the bitching about Ozzy not being perfect or missing Ward seems utterly pointless.

Didn't see the show the other night, but have seen Sabbath before a couple of times. To the band's credit, at least it recorded a new album this time, and while decades of Ozzy Inc. doing things mostly for the money definitely eroded whatever reputation he ever had, it's reassuring that Ozzy is being treated almost as an afterthought to this outing, with all eyes on Iommi. But the dif between Sabbath and the Zep reunion is that Zep has reunited sans Bonham, what, three times? All one-off performances. And Bonham was not locked out of the band due to financial feuding, he's dead. But Sabbath has reunited several times already, both with and without Ward, who this time around has been locked out of Sabbath for money reasons, as far as any of us know. A good time can still be had by all, in the band and in the crowd, regardless, and again, I love how the focus has largely been on Iommi and this awesome machine he created. Doesn't mean there's no room to bitch a little about the way this final (?) go-round went down.

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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.