Dusting Off the Sabbath Stones (Tyr - Black Sabbath)

Member Name: Frankingsteins

Product:	Tyr - Black Sabbath
Date:	21/02/08 (14 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Ambitious, fun and uncharacteristically stable late Sabbath.

Disadvantages: Has a rubbish ballad, and nothing to match up to the previous album.

Consistency was never Black Sabbath's strong point, and the arrival of the nineties proved even more troublesome than the eighties for Tony Iommi and whatever other musicians he banded together to record radically different albums all credited to Black Sabbath. 'Tyr' is a welcome anomaly in this turbulent discography, for more or less continuing where its illustrious predecessor 'Headless Cross' left off, and marking the third (third!) vocal performance from Tony Martin, a.k.a. the one who wasn't Ronnie James Dio, but sounded a bit like a slightly inferior version of him.

Despite coming so far down the line and following a much different sound to the classic Sabbath doom, I really enjoyed 'Headless Cross' and was glad to finally get round to this successor a year or so later. It's not quite as good, I'll get that out of the way at the beginning, but it has certain adventurous qualities that I would have loved to see continue through the subsequent albums, most notably Sabbath's first conceptual suite in the three songs dealing with Ancient Norse mythology: 'The Battle of Tyr,' 'Odin's Court' and 'Valhalla.'

While Martin's lyrics are fairly broad and pedestrian in their overview, obviously lacking the detail of more dedicated Viking bands like Amon Amarth and Bathory, it's nice to see a metal song about Vikings that doesn't limit itself to celebrating their slaughtering, raping and pillaging as if that was the coolest thing about them (well, perhaps it was), and though Geoff Nichols' keyboards still have a distinctly eighties polish rather than a more authentic sound of Ancient Viking Yamaha, this is a pretty cool trilogy of songs that oddly extend in length as their titles shorten. 'The Battle of Tyr' is a mere minute of Hollywood symphonic grandeur from Nichols before the song really begins in the acoustic 'Odin's Court,' which sounds like a cleaned-up version of what Bathory was doing at the time with nice soprano vocals from Martin in a minimalist atmosphere, and the inevitable rock finale comes in the slightly disappointing and repetitive but nonetheless cool 'Valhalla.'

While this Norse trinity is perhaps the focal point of the album, the rest is equally interesting and diverse, even if some of it is completely awful. The song in question is the penultimate 'Feels Good To Me,' the arbitrary power ballad that even the band admits was recorded due to record company pressure to release a bland single in the style of the earlier 'No Stranger to Love' which was at least a bit more palatable. It really is very bad, and the only touch that even remotely Feels Sabbath To Me is a brief bit of electric guitar noise included to make the easy listening listeners get all flustered and feel deliciously naughty with their "heavy metal."

Sabbath fans are at least provided a slight apology for this abomination with the final song 'Heaven in Black' which sounds more like a Black Sabbath single should sound; irresistibly catchy guitar from Iommi's endless well of riffs, and a powerful, almost ridiculously exciting chorus. It gets a little darker later on, but the chorus is always there to clap along to and feel uplifted. This album is plagued by weird and slightly jarring pop elements that sneak in every so often, usually in the form of a one-off verse that doesn't quite fit in, making it more accessible to a wider audience even if it clearly isn't in the same league as the early seventies albums.

A common criticism of this album is that legendarily loud drummer Cozy Powell's kit bashing is too prominent in the production, drowning out the other instruments, but this only really becomes an issue on a couple of the early songs; 'Anno Mundi' on which he is quite good and interesting, and 'The Law Maker' where he just bashes slowly along and becomes a bit irritating. Iommi takes the customary backseat of this period with his riffs, which is always a shame, but Martin is more than capable of making up for it with some compelling verses, great choruses and even greater pre-choruses, his speciality. Although he lacks some of the power of Dio, he instantly won me over on 'Headless Cross' and continues to impress here, particularly with the powerful performances of 'Jerusalem' and 'The Law Maker.'

The central epic 'The Sabbath Stones' is good also, but fails in its very obvious attempt to recapture the spirit of Old Sabbath, particularly songs like 'Children of the Sea' and even right back to the titular 'Black Sabbath.' The length feels unnecessary, especially as the whole thing is just repeated once over before the faster, more upbeat ending is tagged on with its optimistic lead guitar and "woah-oah-oah" accompaniment (mmm...), but that said, the acoustic guitar touches and Nichols' keyboards that sort of almost sound like a violin if you can't quite recall what a real violin sounds like adds to the excellent atmosphere present throughout, even if this album will always be the slightly inferior cousin of the irresistibly dastardly 'Headless Cross.'

1. Anno Mundi
2. The Law Maker
3. Jerusalem
4. The Sabbath Stones
5. The Battle of Tyr
6. Odin's Court
7. Valhalla
8. Feels Good to Me
9. Heaven in Black

Summary: Black Sabbath's fifteenth studio album (1990).