Artist: Martin, Tony
Label: MTM Records
Release: 2005
Rating: 4/5
This is only the second solo album from the legendary Black Sabbath vocalist, though this excellent singer has stayed active the whole time in other projects (Rondinelli, The Cage, Giuntini Project,…).
“Scream” is a great album! Top notch! It truly sounds alive and venomous, and it delivers what the successor to the Black Sabbath album “Cross Purposes” (1994) would probably have sounded like. The riffs are thick and raw! They create a massive sound. As for the guitars, which are mostly played on the album by Tony’s son Joe Harford, you obviously can’t expect a perfect Iommi tone, but they’re played at the level “Scream” demands! So it’s not just that the “fat” riffing is totally convincing, the guitar sound itself on “Scream” is crushing enough for a hard rock album of Martin’s breed, or, as already said, for a “Cross Purposes” successor!
The first track, Raising Hell, is a full-on revival of eighties Sabbath, and its beat uses a line played entirely by the late drum wizard Cozy Powell. Tony Martin found that Cozy recording on a dusty shelf in his studio. It comes from one of their old jam sessions together. The drums across the record are played, incredibly convincingly, by Tony Martin himself, which confirms his talent as a multi-instrumentalist. Bitter Sweet is actually a leap into riffs that Iommi also wrote back when he was still together with Ozzy. The only difference is that Martin is now on vocals. The peak of the record is undoubtedly the title track Scream, with an excellent, highly vibrant atmosphere, where the instrumental middle section stands out, with a fast solo of wickedly obscure melody on electric violin sparking away. The album’s closer, Field Of Lies, is also outstanding, and it vaguely reminds you of the Black Sabbath song Shinig, which Martin sang, for example, at his audition in 1986 before joining Black Sabbath.
Keyboards were played by Geoff Nicholls (ex-Black Sabbath)! The songwriting chemistry and collaboration between Nicholls and Martin is especially noticeable in Surely Love Is Dead, which carries a fantastic classic hard rock riff melody wrapped in a “Hammond” curtain! The record is a many-colored jigsaw puzzle with all the virtues that Tony Martin’s vocals conjure up. After all these years, still at full strength. Martin gave Nicholls a more prominent role in playing keyboards within the songs, compared to Nicholls’ involvement on the Black Sabbath albums.
I can say: welcome home, good old Tony! On his own turf, with his own ideas and his own band. “Scream” is a real breath of fresh air for the rock scene and more. It’s actually a complement to the hard rock scene and fills a little piece in the mosaic that’s been missing since those magnificent Black Sabbath, of which Martin was also a part, are gone! “Scream” will appeal to everyone who misses Black Sabbath in all their incarnations without Ozzy on vocals! So, lovers of true classicism in hard rock, in hard rock dressed in a properly gloomy feel, which Martin clearly has a firm grip on, and whose language he learned during his time with Black Sabbath more than convincingly, do not pass this record by!
Lineup
Tony Martin – vocals, bass guitar, drums, electric violin
Geoff Nicholls – keyboards
Joe Harford – guitar
Cozy Powell – drums on “Raising Hell”
Production
Tony Martin
Tracklist
1. Raising Hell
2. Bitter Sweet
3. Faith in Madness
4. I’m Gonna Live Forever
5. Scream
6. Surely Love is Dead
7. The Kids of Today (Don’t Understand the Blues)
8. Wherever You Go
9. Field of Lies
Running time: 48:24
