The facts: 13 is the biggest comeback of the year, give or take a David Bowie album, and as such it’s been engineered with the sort of scientific precision that would do the eggheads in charge of the Large Hadron Collider proud. There’s too much riding on it to allow room for confusion, misdirection or anything that might scare the horses. That the result is unmistakably an album that sounds like vintage Black Sabbath right down to inclement weather conditions will come as no surprise to anyone. But the fact that it’s such a good one just might… What the PR says: 13 was recorded primarily in Los Angeles and features original Black Sabbath members Ozzy Osbourne (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar) and Geezer Butler (bass), joined at the sessions by drummer Brad Wilk (Rage Against The Machine). Produced by Rick Rubin (seven-time Grammy winner, two of those as producer of the year), Who’s on it: Um, see above. What’s it like: After all the success, bust-ups, recriminations, reunions, drug madness, bitter lawsuits, reality show meltdowns, serious health problems, repeated rehab stints and general batshit crazy behaviour, we’ve ended up right back where we started. It starts, as it should, with an almighty riff. End Of The Beginning is Black Sabbath (the song) redux: an eight-minute wallop to the gut that ladles foreboding atmospherics on to tectonic grind, before stepping up its pace around a third of the way through. “Reanimation of the sequence rewinds the future to the past,” howls Ozzy, and while the sentiment may be pure Doctor Who-circa-1976 hokum, the delivery is gloriously clear-headed: the dead-eyed zombie who multi-tracked his way through his last few solo albums is nowhere to be heard. They’ve played it cunningly. Amid all the blind idolatry that has grown around the band, it’s easy to forget that every album recorded by the original quartet had its own personality: Black Sabbath was wide-eyed and bluesy; Paranoid swung from pole to emotional pole; Master Of Reality was a rush of blood to the head and Vol. 4 was the dense, druggy comedown; Sabbath Bloody Sabbath was wired and experimental; Sabotage was just mental. Even Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die! were different. Not good. Just different. Here’s the thing: 13 doesn’t sound like any one of those albums. It sounds, at various points during its 70-minute length, like all of them: a riff here, a melody line there, the odd “Alright now!” thrown in for good measure. With its unlikely guitar/tambourine combo and bank of keyboards, the otherwise monolithic Age Of Reason wouldn’t be out of place towards the end of Sabotage; the punching, jabbing riff and fast-footed percussive tattoo of Live Forever can trace its lineage directly back to Children Of The Grave; the hazy, dislocated Zeitgeist effectively is Planet Caravan Pt II, with a Django Reinhardt-inspired guitar solo and an astronaut-drifting-in-space narrative nicked from Bowie’s Space Oddity; Damaged Soul is most startling of all, a heavy blues jam replete with wandering harmonica that rewinds all the way back to their debut. In another band’s hands, all this might sound crass and lazy. Here, it’s both hearteningly familiar and mightily impressive. No, 13 isn’t as good as their first six albums – what is? – but it’s a million times better than most of what followed, and way more than you could ever expect from a three men of pensionable age who proved all they had to prove 40 years ago. If it does turn out to be their last album – and time, age, health and a few sizable hints in the press and on the record suggest that’s not impossible – then this is the perfect way to close the circle. (Dave Everley)
Posted on: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 21:16:15 +0000
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