Both guitars on this album are tuned down, the story being that it made it easier for Tony Iommi to play his guitar, given the accident he had suffered some years earlier to the fingers on his right hand. With Geezer Butler tuning his bass guitar down to suit, it adds to the renewed sense of doom and foreboding in the music on this album.
Hacking coughing starts off the album, before bursting into the mud buzzing anthem of "Sweet Leaf". The strength of the song is in its three major parts - the head bouncing primary riff on which the vocals are laid, the thematic bridging riff between verses, and the harried and violent solo riff where all three musicians are basically doing their own solo break and mashing them together. Great stuff.
"After Forever", if you pay attention to the lyrics, almost comes across as Sabbath's attempt to deflect from the assertion that they are a satanic band. this would be to the detriment of lyricist Butler, whose religious upbringing hold sway here. No matter in the long run, the song itself is terrific with another assortment of great riffs (NB Biohazard's cover version on Nativity in Black: A Tribute to Black Sabbath is awesome).
Following Iommi's instrumental "Embryo" comes one of the band's all time classics, "Children of the Grave". The magnificent rumbling build-up before exploding into its heavy thumping riff is still one of the best beginnings to a song ever written. Lyrically it is still as hard hitting as it was when it was recorded, and Ozzy gives a stunning vocal performance.
Another Iommi instrumental called "Orchid" opens up the second half of the album, before "Lord of this World" storms in, featuring more great work from Geezer and Bill Ward. It is amazing that these two can pretty much play their own solo pieces, and weave it into the framework of the songs without it sounding like they are all out of time or all over the place.
The one weak moment of the album follows this. "Solitude" incorporates both flute and piano, as well as a different vocal performance by Ozzy, allowing him to show his versatility as well. All this is fine, but the song itself stretches to five minutes, and it really takes the sting out of the album. If it had been reeled back into about three minutes maximum, well, the impact may not have been so great. It's great to hear Black Sabbath able to do these kind of songs, but not so long and not within this framework.
Saving the end of the album is the legendary "Into the Void", which comes back to remind everyone of where this band is really heading, driven along with Iommi and Geezer's bloodletting riff work over Ward's unrelenting drumming and under Ozzy's rising vocals.
Master of Reality continues the progression of Black Sabbath, from small time local band to world domination. Five classic and legendary songs feature here, and though they are done well it is only the slower instrumental pieces that bring the rating down from out of the ceiling.
No comments:
Post a Comment