Can you feel the mighty wall of power?

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

18/09/83 : Born Again : Black Sabbath


My third Sabbath album after Paranoid and their eponymous effort (which I'd completely forgotten about) and we've had an Ozzy solo effort in there as well - so I really can't say I'm approaching this with a great deal of enthusiasm.

And well, it's not hateful but it does take itself all very seriously in a 70s rawk style.  Amusingly, like Johnny Mathis from a yesterday, it's very much a throwback to earlier times - whilst being nothing like Johnny in the slightest, obviously.  I'm not an expert, but if you like this sort of thing I see no reason why you wouldn't like it - it's not Ozzy-era (I assume he was in rehab somewhere) so I'll be interested to find out who the vocalist is, but tbh it doesn't make a great deal of difference to me.  It is however a horrible album cover and it will no doubt amaze you to hear neither of us own this one - 6.5/15 means we slip to a historical low of 43%. 

We're at #4 with a new entry this week - it stayed in the charts for a mere seven weeks, never to be seen again.  The top three has changed order this week - it was UB40 (a new entry), Paul Young and Big Country this week and that was it for new entries in the top 10, with Gary Numan being the next one at #12.

Wikipedia has more on this than I was expecting (189 milliPeppers) and tells me it's their 11th album and it's their only one with Ian Gillan.  Ian wasn't convinced he wanted to join Sabbath, but met up with the others and "after a night of heavy drinking" agreed to record something.  The band actually thought they were putting something out under a supergroup kinda thing, but their manager (bizarrely, Sharon Osborne's father) told them "well, here's the contract: it is going to go out as a Black Sabbath album".  It sounds like they had fun, but everyone agreed that Gillan wasn't really Sabbath material - the critics were pretty down on the album but the fans liked it and it did well commercially.  There is an amusing story about the band having a Stonehenge set for the tour which suffered from the opposite issue to Spinal Tap in that they were too big - it's well worth a read.

"Customers also listened to" Heaven & Hell, Dio and Judas Priest - all people I can live without.  As I can live without Black Sabbath - if you want it though, it's yours.

11/09/83 - A fantastic album
25/09/83 - A throwback - even back then

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