Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

 

I guess with the coming of punk, Black Sabbath kinda fell off of my radar after the superb Vol. 4, and what I did hear of this one never really impressed me all that much. Their drug'n'alcohol abuse reached epic proportions by this point and this is a bloated and excessive album, although there are still some good points that sneak through. Even the cover is a bit over-the-top and way more devilish than the band ever presented themselves in their lyrics and stage show.

After the excellent production job on the previous album, the sound here is somewhat brittle and grinding - kinda like their teeth after a cocaine binge. There's a lot more added keyboards, as well, which I never thought worked all that well for them, overall, either.

Although the sound isn't quite as powerful, the opening "Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath" starts the record off with a strong riff and a hard/soft arrangement (and various changes) that is reminiscent of their previous work and is highly promising. I don't know if it's the drugs or if it's the song's key, but Ozzy sounds a bit strained here, as well - reaching for the higher part of his range. He succeeds, but seemingly just barely. The awkwardly titled "National Acrobat" continues with some more good, evil-sounding riffage and oddly, Ozzy seems to pull some of his melody from "Jolene", but maybe that's my imagination! There does seem to be an over abundance of parts being added to the songs as well - kinda throwing in the kitchen sink - and while this doesn't kill the song, it does kind of prevent any groove happening. This album's obligatory acoustic guitar ballad is funnily enough titled "Fulff", but it's a nicely pretty tune, "Sabbra Cadabra" is a fast-paced riffer with an oddly keyboard-dominate middle section, while "Killing Yourself to Live" (relatable title!) is probably my fave and most memorable off of this album, sounding like it could easily have fit in on Vol. 4, down the the riffs sounding similar to some from that record.

"Who Are You?" is a slow, plodding number, dominated by synthesizer twiddles'n'tweaks'n'squeaks - not really something that works in the context of Sabbath. "Looking For Today" is riff-filled, but almost pop-metal, with another subdued middle break, and everything concludes with another bizarrely titled tune, "Spiral Architect", with a quiet opening, some powerful chording and another keyboard-dominated chorus, along with multiple changes throughout, moving from metal to pop to strings to commercial metal and not sounding much like trad Sabbath to me.

Regardless of whatever drugs were clouding their judgement, I understand that they must have felt that they needed to evolve, but for me, this was not a successful experiment. There's way too much going on in most of the songs, a bit too much reliance on strings'n'keys and not a good production sound, overall. Sorry to say, but for me, Sabbath really are just the first four albums, but what great albums those are!