Artist: Black Sabbath
Label: Vertigo Records
Release: 1983
In the early eighties, Iommi clearly felt very much at home among Ritchie Blackmore’s former comrades. First came Ronnie James Dio, good old Elf/Rainbow pixie, Tony’s killer combination who freed Black Sabbath from the shackles of the past and, on the wings of the phenomenal Heaven And Hell and Mob Rules, boldly led them into the eighties’ music world, which was unpredictable for the old farts. The Black Sabbath lineup with Dio thus became legendary. “Almost” as much as Iommi’s next experiment, called Born Again!
Most of you can probably picture with ease the reaction of every Deep Purple and Black Sabbath fanatic at the moment the news of Gillan strengthening the legendary Birmingham collective hit them like a bolt from the blue, probably somewhere in the middle of the afternoon lawn mowing. A strange decision, especially if you consider that throughout the entire first half of the seventies the two bands were locked in fierce rivalry, tirelessly storming the music market across the pond. Ian’s choice becomes even more interesting given that his way of expressing himself musically in no way matches the dark, demonic, or whatever-you-call-it “devilish” Black Sabbath image. That image is once again built on Iommi’s hard, gloomy, and therefore traditionally excellent riffs, which I can say without a doubt belong in the inner circle of the guitarist’s best six-string creations. Those recognizable, heavily distorted fifth-chord grips testify to Tony’s determination, with which he stylishly shuts the mouths of all the doubters of his post-Ozzy era projects.
Born Again is without a doubt one of the most “hilarious” Black Sabbath stories (only the burlesque of Seventh Star tops it). The album, with the exception of the opening heavy rocker Trashed, rarely manages to thrill in the true sense of the word. There are several reasons for this apathy; one of the main ones is the disgustingly metallic production, in which even Iommi’s always-frightening guitar grips often turn watery. Combining those with Gillan’s distinctly “anti-Sabbath” lyrics is Born Again’s second problem. You can’t really blame Ian here, since the man tries with all his might to create the “blackest” image possible, but, well, it’s anything but a good fit for him. The final shape of songs like Disturbing The Priest suffers because of it: a typical Tony Iommi riff, over which Gillan’s thin voice haunts with hysterical witchy screeching. Ian definitely shines here. That goes especially for the central part of the song, which would have benefited most from being split off right away from its insanely annoying intro. The irony is that it’s precisely on such disoriented stuff that Ian gets lyrically closest to some kind of convincing Black Sabbath figure. He reaches the complete opposite of that with the hard-to-understand Keep It Warm, a strangely erotic-laden tale that in a different setting would probably fit its original purpose perfectly. Somewhere between the two lies the fun Digital Bitch. Not so much because of the music as because of the jokey lyrics, with which Gillan, in his own style, settles scores with his “dearest ones”. In typical Tony Iommi style, Born Again, E5150-style, once again leaves us to “ponder” at least two oddball things. These are the instrumental and entirely dispensable compositions Stonehenge and its sister scarecrow The Dark, whose true meaning is still incredibly hard to grasp today. Interesting that, in this age of heavy metal’s resurrection, the man twice tries to darken the mood this way. Anyway, you won’t get any particularly noteworthy moment here, apart from an unusually strong headache.
The strongest moments of the album, besides the opening Trashed, turn out to be the tirelessly droning machinery of Zero The Hero, the scattered Hot Line (another nice example of Ian’s incompatibility), and one more Iommi masterpiece, the pure one-of-a-kind Born Again. The latter glows throughout with Gillan’s uncompromising vocal contributions, which present the singer in such high-flying vocal form for the very last time. It’s a pity the gentlemen didn’t have a more sober view of the whole creative process back then, which would have surely helped those rare promising Born Again flashes shine more strongly, rather than the, sadly, all too often thoroughly shallow creations.
Lineup
Tony Iommi: guitar
Ian Gillan: vocals
Geezer Butler: bass
Bill Ward: drums
Geoff Nicholls: keyboards
Production
Robin Black & Black Sabbath
Tracklist
1.Trashed
2.Stonehenge
3.Disturbing The Priest
4.The Dark
5.Zero The Hero
6.Digital Bitch
7.Born Again
8.Hot Line
9.Keep It Warm
Album length: 40.40
