HEADLESS CROSS

Headless Cross is the fourteenth full-length studio album by British heavy rock/ metal act Black Sabbath. A new drummer in Cozy Powell ( Rainbow, Whitesnake, Brian May, Gary Moore...etc) has been added to the lineup and a new bassist in Laurence Cottle as well. Tony Martin is now the lead vocalist in Black Sabbath for the second album in a row which at this point in the band´s history must be considered an achivement.

The music follows much the same formula as the band used on The Eternal Idol (1987). The music is heavy metal with an AOR touch which is mostly due to the use of keyboards in the music. Tony Martin is excellent on this album too. A great asset for Black Sabbath to have a frontman like him. The songs are generally very simple in structure and very much vers/ chorus build. I tend to get a bit tired of that formula but it does work pretty well here ( even though some of the songs are a bit too long IMO). The music on the album has an epic edge to it that I imidiately associate with the european power metal genre and I´m sure many of the bands in that genre that emerged in the nineties had listened to both the Dio and the Tony Martin led Black Sabbath albums for inspiration. There were 8 tracks on the original LP but there´s a bonus track called Cloak & Dagger on some later CD versions. Not on all CD versions though so if you can´t live without this song remember to look for a version where it is present.

The musicianship is excellent but I wouldn´t demand less with the players involved here.

The production which is done by Tony Iommi and Cozy Powell is allright but a bit too eighties sounding for my taste.

Headless Cross is a good album by Black Sabbath but to my ears it´s a bit less inspired than The Eternal Idol. It´s still a 3 star rating though.