Release date: 04/24/1989
Label: I.R.S.
Length: 40:24
Production: Tony Iommi and Cozy Powell
Rating: 9/10
In the second half of the eighties, metal pioneers Black Sabbath slowly started picking themselves up off the floor. By 1989, the last remaining original member, guitar genius Tony Iommi, had managed to build a really solid version of the legendary band around himself and singer Tony Martin, with drumming champ Cozy Powell (ex-Jeff Beck, Rainbow, MSG, Whitesnake) and longtime keyboardist Geoff Nicholls rounding out the lineup. This version of Black Sabbath recorded the album “Headless Cross” in 1989, and it turned out to be one of their best efforts without Ozzy or Ronnie James Dio on lead vocals, despite being made under rough circumstances. After the previous album “The Eternal Idol” (1986) and the tour that followed, Black Sabbath had commercially crashed and burned completely.
The British label Vertigo ended the partnership after eighteen years, and the American corporate suits at Warner Bros Records followed right behind. An increasingly lonely Iommi and his crew ‘in black’ therefore moved over to a smaller American label, I.R.S. The guest bassist on “Headless Cross” was Laurence Cottle, mostly a jazz fusion musician best known for his work with The Alan Parsons Project and Eric Woolfson, while Iommi’s famous buddy Brian May (Queen) contributed a superb guitar solo on “When Death Calls,” one of the hardest-hitting and at the same time most complex Black Sabbath achievements of the eighties.
Iommi and his gang didn’t sweat the appetites of greedy labels too much and made an album that won back the trust of plenty of longtime fans. You can tell right from the title track, which, after a short instrumental intro, “The Gates of Hell,” with its distinctly creepy, gothic atmosphere, hits the listener like lightning out of a cloudy sky. The title-track masterpiece, which also came out as a single, instantly became one of the classics of the Martin era. Martin’s furious, ‘supersonic’ singing, which always had plenty in common with Dio, Iommi’s juicy guitar passages, Powell’s breakneck drum fills and Nicholls’ mysteriously tinted symphonic arrangements create an outstanding, bombastic atmosphere that was so typical of this period for the famous metal gloom-mongers from Birmingham.
That this version of Black Sabbath was more than just a modernized copy of the Dio era was also obvious on the melodic hard rock/metal hybrid “Devil & Daughter,” where Iommi proved with a terrific solo that he could have ‘eaten’ plenty of much younger guitarists of the time for breakfast, while the build-up of epic mood reached new dimensions. “Kill in the Spirit World” was nicely balanced between epic and dark ambient shades, and Powell’s dynamic drumming was once again a treat for the ears. Iommi’s melancholic guitar solo rounded it all out, and Martin was at the peak of his vocal form.
“Call of the Wild,” which originally should have been called “Hero” until Iommi’s former partner in crime Ozzy had already released a song with that name on the album “No Rest for the Wicked” (1988), was clear proof that Iommi was keeping a close eye on the hard rock scene of the day. The lyrics on “Headless Cross” were almost entirely occult, at times practically Satanic, which was unusual for a version of Black Sabbath without Geezer Butler in the lineup. “Black Moon” was a somewhat more ‘basic’ hard rocker with slight blues undertones, while this time Martin was the one most responsible for the epic atmosphere with his bravura vocal approach. On the melancholic-dark drama “Nightwing,” Iommi also threw in a few short acoustic passages, which made a nice contrast with the track’s mostly hard-hitting nature. “Cloak and Dagger,” where Martin once again wowed with outstanding vocal acrobatics, was a mighty and thoroughly fitting finale to the album.
“Headless Cross,” one of the most overlooked achievements in the saga of the masters of metal darkness, ranks among the very best Black Sabbath records without Ozzy and Dio on vocals. Even though the album got a mostly positive response from fans when it came out, the crowd of critics at the time was much less impressed, and “Headless Cross” ended up as yet another criminally overlooked record, especially in the US, where Iommi and the gang even had to cancel the rest of the tour. For the 1989 “Headless Cross” tour, Iommi added bassist Neil Murray (ex-Colosseum II, National Health, Gilgamesh, Bow Wow, Whitesnake) to the lineup, and recorded the next Black Sabbath album with him, the equally unfairly overlooked “Tyr” (1990).
author: Peter Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. The Gates Of Hell (1:04)
2. Headless Cross (6:15)
3. Devil & Daughter (4:32)
4. When Death Calls (6:41)
5. Kill In The Spirit World (4:59)
6. Call Of The Wild (5:09)
7. Black Moon (3:56)
8. Nightwing (6:19)
9. Cloak and Dagger (4:37)
Musicians:
Tony Martin – vocals, bass guitar (3)
Tony Iommi – guitar
Laurence Cottle – bass guitar
Cozy Powell – drums
Geoff Nicholls – keyboards
Guest musician:
Brian May – guitar solo (4)
