Sabbath changed management to Don Arden’s company, and remaining members Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler went about finding a new vocalist. There wasn’t a shortage of available people out there to take on the role. Reportedly, both Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Deep Purple and Whitesnake’s David Coverdale were considered for the role, as was then-unknown Michael Bolton, whose audition tape was one of many collated by the band. Eventually it was Don Arden who suggested Ian Gillan, the former Deep Purple vocalist from their glory days, might make a good fit. Gillan himself was apparently not convinced that it would be a good move, but having met with both Iommi and Butler he agreed to join the project.
And, at that time, that’s what the three of them and returning drummer Bill Ward, who had left the group due to his drinking after recording “Heaven and Hell” but was now sober and ready to be involved again, thought this was going to be. They considered that this was going to be a group project that was not under the Black Sabbath banner. It wasn’t until the album was completed and in the hands of the record company that the band was told it was going to be released under the Black Sabbath name. As a marketing tool this was going to be a winner, combining the former vocalist of Deep Purple with the original trio from Black Sabbath under the latter’s name. It was a no brainer. But would the music that came from the album be anything like what that band had produced in its long and storied career?
In much the same way as the band experienced when Dio came in after Ozzy, there was a question mark as to how Ian Gillan’s vocals would mix into the Iommi/Butler/Ward sound. Perhaps more so, how would the lyrics of those songs mesh with the Black Sabbath aura? When writing and recording the album of course, they were not expecting this to BE a Black Sabbath album, so the subtle changes that come as a result are more understandable if you take this into account. Mixing Gillan’s lyrics with Sabbath’s sound was perhaps the biggest obstacle the group faced, but the judgement on release would have been less so had it been marketed under another name.
And the style of songs produced here is somewhat significant though not as diverse as you may have imagined when you first came into the album. The closing two tracks on the album are perhaps the biggest change from what you would typecast as a Black Sabbath sound. “Hot Line” chugs along at a mid-tempo pace in a style that doesn’t represent what the name of the band on the cover is. Ian is trying to take a tumble with a girl and trying to get some explanation for it, which is a topic most unusual again for the band. HIs vocals are again superb, but it feels like a cheap take lyric wise. The same goes for “Keep it Warm”, the album’s closing track. The music flows at that same mid-tempo, and Ian is again singing about a woman, and there isn’t a lot of memorable riff work from Tony. All of those thoughts about “Hot Line” apply again to “Keep it Warm”.
The title track “Born Again” that precedes these two tracks is in a similar vein. The almost maudlin slow tempo of the track does has similar vestiges of a doom metal track without that true doom guitar sound and instead the quiet ruminations of such. Gillan’s vocal dominates the track and sounds fantastic, but the song is hard work overall, looking for somewhere to go without really making any effort to do so. It makes the second half of this album a difficult thing to digest if you are looking for that true Iommi/Butler sound driving the momentum. There is little of that here. It is of a different character that you would expect, and for me at least doesn’t use the opportunity of utilising the greatest assets of each of the band members.
So that accounts for three of the nine tracks here. The album only has seven true tracks, with the instrumental piece “Stongehenge” being the segue into “Disturbing the Priest” and “The Dark” doing the same job into “Zero the Hero”. The other four have a much better feel for what you would expect from this quartet. “Digital Bitch” opens the second side of the album at a good clip and with that Gillan attitude you expect to hear from his vocals. This is also true from the album’s opening track “Trashed”, that screams (in Gillan’s case literally) out of the speakers at you with all of the hallmarks of the great songs. “Disturbing the Priest” dials back in speed but dials up the hard guitar and drums and Gillan’s screaming vocals, and “Zero the Hero” comes out hard and heavy with Gillan’s double time vocals over Tony and Geezer’s great melody crunching guitars. These three songs that comprise the first half of the album are the winners here, proving conclusively that this foursome definitely have the ability to write songs that are top shelf.
I didn’t hear this album until I had left high school which was several years after its release. I HAD heard the single “Trashed”, as the video for that song was often on late night music video shows in those mid-1980's. Indeed, although the song was credited to Black Sabbath, I had no idea that it was Ian Gillan on vocals until it was pointed out by one of my best friends one night. Hilarity ensued (at my expense, which was the usual way) when I said I had just assumed it was Ozzy because of the long-haired singer in the film clip. No, it was a very long-haired Ian Gillan on vocals. Great film clip though and great song.
So when I finally got around to hearing the album, I was always in a 50/50 mindset over it. I loved the first side of the album. It had the kind of songs that I recognised, that I thought of a Sabbath songs. The second side was generally a battle, but I liked them well enough, it wasn’t as if I hated them or disliked them. I just thought they were quite different from what had come on the first side of the album.
Along with “Seventh Star”, this album stands alone outside the other three eras of the band – the Ozzy years, the Dio years, and the Tony Martin years. And both of those albums were written and recorded to be different projects than a Black Sabbath album, and thus why they don’t necessarily conform to what you imagine a Black Sabbath album is like.
I still enjoy this album today, indeed I have again for the past few weeks. As soon as “Trashed” starts up you can’t help but get enthused and sing along with Gillan, and the rest of the album falls into line behind it. It isn’t an album I reach for too often, given the other amazing albums this band has produced, but it is still fun when that time does come around. Like other iterations of other bands, I would love to have heard what this line up of the band might have produced had it decided to write and record another album together. Having been on the road together I feel as though they would have worked together better having had that time to gel together. This was not to be, with Gillan being courted for the soon-to-be-reformed Mark II line up of Deep Purple, and Geezer Butler deciding that the time was right to take a break as well. Iommi went on to do a solo album that, just like this album, was soon released under the Black Sabbath name instead, and creating even further rifts between the band in name only and the old time fans of that band. You just can’t keep all of the people happy all of the time.
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