Following up the return to form for this band with The Eternal Idol was always going to be a difficult task. With the Sabbath legacy back off the operating table, the task now was to keep it alive and resist cardiac arrest.
Unlike that previous album however, there are less inspirational guitar riffs from Tony Iommi, a lot more vocal wailing from Tony Martin, and the songs sound like they have been written especially for the 1980’s soft rock era that they were residing in. There is very little here that would convince you that this is a Black Sabbath album. All the trademarks have been washed clean, and instead you have an album that vaguely reminds you of a softer Whitesnake album – except that at the time Whitesnake were producing raucous hard rock albums. In the same way that Seventh Star should never have gone under the Black Sabbath banner, here is another example. It’s not a bad album per se, it’s just that it doesn’t SOUND like a Black Sabbath album! In fact, if you were to play it to a friend without announcing who the artist is, they would be more likely to enjoy for what it is without the pressure of ‘liking’ a Black Sabbath album.
There are some good songs here, such as “Headless Cross”, “Black Moon” and “Nightwing”, but this really isn’t a metal album. It’s a hard rock album at best, and one where the grunt has been ripped out of Tony Iommi’s guitar. Whether that was it in the songwriting or the production, it should have been caught and rectified.
Rating: Could have been a lot better with more true Iommi. 3/5.
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