The CD Odyssey has been stalled due to a whole slew of after work events this
week, including going to the opening of a new pub/restaurant space (upstairs at Smith's pub in downtown Victoria - and quite nice, go check it out) and then to see my friend Missy's spoken word poetry performance "Where's My Flying Car?" which by the way, is funny, insightful, and only in town until Saturday (but heading to Vancouver for my readers over there).
In any event this review was written whenever I had fifteen minutes
to spare because I needed to get it done and move on to something different.
Disc 434 is…Born Again
Year of Release: 1983
What’s up with the Cover? It’s a horrible, clawed demon baby. This cover always reminds me of that awful
1974 movie “It’s Alive” about a monstrous baby with giant claws.
How I Came To Know It: I’ve known this album
since it came out, and my brother bought it on vinyl. I actually came to really know Black Sabbath
around 1980 and so, “Born Again” was the third album that I heard. At thirteen, I was blissfully unaware of the
whole “Deep Sabbath” controversy.
How It Stacks Up: I have eleven Black Sabbath albums, including one
live record. Sadly, “Born Again” resides
at the bottom of that illustrious pile.
Rating: 2 stars
This album had me thinking of
George Lazenby. You know – that guy who
played James Bond for the one movie, and that we’d all just as soon
forget. It wasn’t that George was terrible
at being Bond but he just doesn’t feature during Roger Moore/Sean Connery
debates apart other than as an aside.
When it comes to Black Sabbath
that same debate is the Ozzie Osbourne/Ronnie James Dio debate. Ozzie was the classic original, like
Connery. Dio was the guy who put a new
spin on the band and still managed to keep it awesome, like Moore. The lead singer for Born Again is Deep
Purple’s Ian Gillan, and he is the George Lazenby of this story. He appears for one record only, isn’t
terrible but still falls far short of the other two guys. We’d all wish we could forget him.
Except, as I’ve stated above, when
I was thirteen I didn’t give a fig about the Black Sabbath/Deep Purple
controversy – I just knew I liked heavy metal music and wanted to hear more of
it. “Born Again” delivered for me at the
time.
That said, even at thirteen I knew
this record was a step down from the two by Dio that preceded it (“Mob Rules”and “Heaven and Hell”). It isn’t
all Gillan’s fault, although he does try a little too hard, with many a
maniacal rock n’ roll scream (although on songs like “Disturbing the Priest” he tries way too hard, and comes off
sounding like a hippy having a bad trip).
Gillan is actually pretty good on the album’s two really good songs, “Trashed” and “Zero the Hero.” He connects
Deep Purple’s proggy rock sound to Tony Iommi’s guitar licks and the
combination is essentially quality mid-eighties metal.
“Trashed” is a cautionary tale of drinking and driving – a party
that gets out of hand early, and ends with an inebriated car wreck. My favourite line is:
“So we went back to the bar and hit the bottle again
But there was no tequila.
Then we started on the whisky just to steady our brains
Because there was no tequila.”
Because as we all know, what you
need to steady your nerves when you’ve finished off the tequila is more hard
liquor. Yikes.
“Zero the Hero” is
basically a nasty attack on the rich and indigent. Society’s most privileged are a common target
in metal music, and I admit hearing Gillan deliver an attack on a do-nothing
silver spoon type suited me well in the day.
What really makes “Zero the Hero”
so amazing is the heavy-assed Iommi riff that drives it along, sluggish and
deep, just like the river that the heroes of the song sit down by while they
eat raw liver (hey – it’s what they do).
According to the liner notes, this
riff is heavily borrowed for Guns n’ Roses “Paradise
City” which I kind of heard, in the same way you can hear secret messages
on a record played backward after someone tells you what to listen for. However, on the subject of the liner notes,
the ones for “Born Again” are excellent, discussing many fans’ dislike this
album openly, including the odd fit of singer Gillan in the mix, but also
giving the record fair praise where deserved.
If only all liner notes were so even-handed, rather than the empty
toadying that is usually featured. But I
digress…
Back to the album which apart from
“Trashed” and “Zero the Hero” is mostly forgettable. The other songs are pedestrian eighties metal
fare. It isn’t awful, but I expect more
from Black Sabbath than that.
Worst of all is the production, which
is painfully fuzzy. Over the last few
days, I’ve played this album both in the car and on headphones, and I enjoyed
it much more in the car. I think one of
the reasons for that is that in traffic the fuzziness of the production is
drowned out by background noise. On
headphones I could really hear the shortcomings of this record. The fuzziness works on “Zero the Hero” giving it a proto-grunge sound that was well ahead
of its time. “Trashed” sounds tinny, but the song is strong enough to rise above
it. The other songs aren’t good enough
to poke their heads out of the sludge.
Almost thirty years later, I still
don’t care about the controversy around this album. I like Deep Purple just fine (although
they’re no Sabbath), and as I noted earlier, there are a couple of songs on
this record that are well worth your time.
I might only listen to it selectively these days, but it brings back
good memories of my heavy metal meat-head youth, so for that I’ll give it a
reserved two stars.
Best tracks: Trashed, Zero the Hero
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