TECHNICAL ECSTASY

The first thing that strikes me when hearing this album is how deteriorated Ozzy Osbourne sounds. His vocal capacities were always limited but the collapse from his morbid mastery to a powerless squeal, that had started around Vol4 and SBS, has come to a sad end here. On It's Allright they even put the vocal non-talent of Bill Ward behind the microphone

But the blame is not on Ozzy alone. All that we hear from Iommi is the sound of a man that is hopelessly in search for his secret stash of magic metal riffs that had gone missing after last night's bad cocaine trip. Some songs like You Won't Change Me contain one or two half-good melodies but by lack of better ideas Sabbath resorts to clumsy key modulations. You got to do something in order to get a 40 minute album together. Also Dirty Woman has some potential, but not much, though Ozzy's vocal marks a short improvement here. An uninspired break squeezes all potential out of this 7 minute song that has material for 3 minutes.

I have no idea what made me decide to buy this album 15 years ago. Everybody knew it was horrible. Maybe I got it for free with a can of Pringles, I don't know. Avoid.