FORBIDDEN

Cross Purposes was a return to form after the awful Dehumanizer. Forbidden is almost as awful as that album and constitutes a sad ending to Black Sabbath's recording career. The line up here is exactly the same as it was on TYR that was released five years earlier. Even if I have the greatest respect and admiration for all of the people involved here, I must say that this is a very weak final statement by one of my favourite line ups of one of my favourite bands. It is particularly sad to note that this album was to be one of Cozy Powell's last efforts ever. As on the horrible Born Again album from the early 80's the weaknesses lie both in the uninspired song writing and some misguided musical ideas. It is fair to say that the band were a bit 'rusty' at this time. However, there are a few decent moments here and I actually rate this higher than both Born Again and Dehumanizer.

Illusion Of Power features a quite ill-advised guest spot by Ice T that (depending on your definition) might perhaps be characterized as a Rap. Or is it just a spoken word passage? Regardless of what you call it, it is rather out of place here. Forbidden is not the first Black Sabbath album to feature a guest artist. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath featured Rick Wakeman on keyboards on one track and Headless Cross featured a guitar solo by Brian May on one track. The nature and pedigree of each of these guests pretty much represents the nature and Prog credentials of the respective album they participated in. From Rick Wakeman to Brian May to Ice T! This captures pretty well how far the band had sunk at this time.

Shaking Off The Chains, Get A Grip and Illusion Of Power are half decent Hard Rock songs. The band sounds a bit sick and tired, which incidentally is the title of another one of the album's songs. Can't Get Close Enough is slower and has more memorable verses; this is probably the album's best song. Another good song is I Won't Cry For You, but nothing out of the ordinary really. It is with Guilty As Hell, Sick And Tired and the title track that the album truly sinks into the mediocre. These songs are quite dull and wholly generic Hard Rock songs without any redeeming features.

Rusty Angels picks things up slightly with a half decent chorus, but the lyrics are rather cheesy and there is nothing really memorable about the song. Kiss Of Death once again slows things down and it is listenable but, again, not very memorable.

This album is truly for fans and collectors only, but some of these might enjoy some moments of this album to some degree at least. Only a couple of decent moments stand between this album and the lowest possible rating, but I decided to go for two stars (and not out of sympathy!)

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