TECHNICAL ECSTASY

By 1976, Black Sabbath had seemed to be losing the momentum gained from their steady rise-to-fame from the Earth-shattering debut to the long famous 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath' album - even their next album after SBS - 'Sabotage' (1975), has proven to be a mighty effort, although never reaching the heights of the renowned previous album. The new album, 'Technical Ecstasy', presented the world with a somewhat 'generic' version of the pioneering Heavy-Metal genre the band had initially had a hand in creating, the overall production being a frad over-compressed and guitar-heavy, the songwriting being a tad tired and uninspired. Having stated the negative aspects of this album (including a Sci-Fi Robot-Porn escalator-love cover-art), it offers a blend of tracks which do have occasional flashes of colour and diversions from their tried-and-true formula. A point worthy of mention is the fact that drummer Bill Ward has been appointed lead-vocal on a ballad tune called 'It's Alright'. It has a nice mellotron- fuelled interlude of a positive nature, but overall is a weaker tune that nobody would guess was BS. Having mentioned 'mellotron' - Gerald Woodruffe is the man contributing lots of keyboards here, and I find that it's his efforts that really lift some rather bland tunes up to snuff. Most 'standard' tune award goes to 'Rock 'n Roll Doctor' (but it's alright.....ha-ha - pun intended). Highlight would have to be the song 'You Won't Change Me', with superb phased organ and ballsy riffs. The longest cut, closing track 'Dirty Women', shows a strong vocal from Ozzy, and a tight instrumental arrangement (although the closing riff outstays its welcome by a minute or two). Ward gives us some double bass-drum in this section. Recommending this album as a solid 3-star effort is a fair assessment from my P.O.V.