BORN AGAIN

I am ashamed to say that I have ignored this album all of these years. I have listened to the bad reviews and written this album off as a mishap of the 80s and the hair bands of the time. After hearing Mob Rules which was released just before this one (with Ronnie James Dio as the lead vocalist), I figured Black Sabbath had taken the next logical step from that album and made "Born Again" from the same cookie cutter pattern as all the other hair bands that were storming the pop charts at the time. Boy was I ever so wrong.

Ian Gillam (Deep Purple) takes the lead vocalist spot on this album. Ian's had some great performances and some not so great, so I am happy to say that this is one of his better gigs and his vocals fit right with the atmosphere and evil feelings of this album. Now, as other reviewers have said, this is not their best album and it doesn't quite reach the 5 star quality of most of the Osbourne era albums, but it comes closer than many of the other non-Ozzy albums. Too bad that things didn't work out between Ian and the band, but this is the only album with Ian on it. The stories go that Ian broke all of his records that he received from the recording of this album and that he threw up when he saw the album cover. Maybe if he had stayed, the sound might have suffered, we will never know. But at least this line up of the band released a very good album here.

The music is hard, the first side of the album is the best and most progressive with songs that should be considered classic Sabbath and should be considered some of their best. The second side suffers from a little sameness, especially from the last two tracks, but don't skip over the title track because it is also one of their best, sounding a lot like the hard dark blues of the first album. Don't make the same mistake I did, give this one a chance. If you don't like it, then it's not like you are out much, but if you do like it, you will discover like I did that you are in for a nice surprise. Congrats to the band for not falling to the corporate heavy metal that was around at the time and for not compromising their sound, at least for this album. This one is and hopefully soon will become an excellent addition to my prog rock collection, preferably on vinyl. 4 stars.