890. Black Sabbath / Technical Ecstasy. 1976. 2.5/5

Every band is entitled to an album where they go outside of their comfort zone, play outside of the box, experiment with their sound, and generally mess with the minds of their diehard fans to the point where they question what the hell was going on when the album was written and recorded. Think Megadeth's Risk, think Helloween's Chameleon, think Metallica's career after 1991. Even for a band that began it's life in the flower power era of the late 1960's and early 1970's, Black Sabbath's Technical Ecstasy is a greatly diversified effort from the catalogue that precedes this, and as a result takes a great deal of effort to get used to.

I didn't hear this album until ten years after it was released, and so came into it from a different direction and amongst a lot of other bands I was discovering at the time. I don't know if I would have a different feeling about it if I had been older and gotten each album as it was recorded, rather than grabbing the whole Sabbath catalogue almost in one hit at second hand record stores in the late 1980's. This resulted in the most appealing albums getting the lion share of listening time, and the ones that didn't immediately grab me getting far less playtime.
The changing landscape of music at the time - with punk beginning to take hold in the UK and bands like Foreigner, Eagles and ELO starting to dominate the US - obviously made a big impression on Sabbath when writing this album. It is slower, almost brighter and creates much less impact as a whole. The increase in piano, keys and synth, along with a less dramatic lyrical aspect, makes this an album that would seem to try and cover all musical genres but sit within none of them. While the opening track "Back Street Kids", the closing track "Dirty Women", and to a lesser extent the long winded "You Won't Change Me" have elements of the Black Sabbath everyone knows, the remainder of the album is a mishmash of experimentalising that is uncomfortable to listen to. The Bill Ward penned "It's Alright", which he also sings on, contains acoustic guitar and piano, while Bill croons along in a ballad that doesn't sit well. Bill can sing, and the band can play, but really this song just doesn't sound like a Black Sabbath song at all. The same for "She's Gone", it is a real departure from the norm. It's not as if they haven't done this before, but whereas a song such as "Changes" sounds powerful and uses the change in direction well, these two songs here don't have the same impact.
The other three songs on the album aren't overly bad songs, but they are average, something that remarkably few songs before this album could be accused of being. "Rock 'n' Roll Doctor" is a repetitive riff and lyric combination but Ozzy's enthusiasm helps to ease the pain. "Gypsy" and "All Moving Parts (Stand Still)" contain the right elements to make them solid Sabbath tracks, but perhaps it is just the surrounding tracks that wipe a bit of the gloss off them.

I'm sure there are people out there who love this album, who will defend it to the end as a wonderful piece of the Black Sabbath history. For them I am very pleased. You could even use the terminology that an average Black Sabbath album is better than most other bands best albums. That too could be argued. While I don't have any problem listening to Technical Ecstasy if anyone should happen to put it on for a spin, I cannot say that I ever have the desire to pull this out of the sleeve and listen to it. I did so again for this review, but given that there are so many other brilliant Black Sabbath albums to choose from, the question will always be why would I deprive myself of those to listen to this once again?

Rating: "I walk the lonely streets in search of a friend". 2.5/5