CD Review: Black Sabbath – 13
Universal Republic
All Access Rating: A-
 |
| Black Sabbath - 13 2013 |
13 is a matter of
life and death for Black Sabbath. The harsh truth of the matter is the
godfathers of heavy metal may not be long for this world.
Tony Iommi’s cancer
scare has certainly given them pause to consider their own mortality, and if
Iommi is to be believed, it was his health concerns that led Sabbath to move on
without original drummer Bill Ward and get 13
made with someone else – namely, Brad Wilk, of Rage Against the Machine and
Audioslave fame. Time waits for no one, not even Black Sabbath.
The grim reaper hasn’t come knocking on their doors just
yet, however. As 13 proves, Sabbath
is, thankfully, still alive and kicking up a monstrous racket of doom-laden
metal that’s reminiscent of that haunting and truly unsettling first album that
signaled such a turbulent sea change in rock music back in 1970. Rife with meditations on
dying and the afterlife, as well as existential thoughts on whether the
Almighty still has a pulse, 13 is the
heaviest, blackest tar Sabbath has stirred in decades, just as producer Rick
Rubin intended. And yet, some of that sludge Sabbath is so famous for has been
washed off. Cleaned off somewhat, the snarling, brass-knuckled sound of 13 is bone-crushing, as that serrated edge to Iommi’s crunching, growling riffs and his intensely focused solos saws through steel, throwing sparks into the air.
Inhabiting both heaven and hell, with sympathy for the devil
and his Maker, the lurching 8:52 first single “God is Dead” seems to move in
slow motion – as if sizing up its prey – right up to the bridge, which twists
and swings like a bridge during an earthquake. Surging with energy, as Iommi’s
guitar slashes like a broadsword, it seems as if Sabbath has discovered an
ancient and evil groove, pulled out of the ground by its roots by Geezer
Butler’s brawny bass lines and reanimated for the garment-rending, circling menace
of “Live Forever.” That survival instinct is kicking in, although the grave
doesn’t seem like such a bad option on 13.
Stretching out long past seven minutes, as most tracks on 13 do, the gnarled psychedelic-blues of “Damaged
Soul” ponderously crawls through the wreckage of a life in ruins, while “Dear
Father” is a slow, steady climb up a mountain of emotional garbage – the remains of a broken relationship with a not-so loving parent. And “Loner” is almost
as depressing, as Iommi stacks cement blocks of riffs to create a movable wall
of thick, impenetrable sound – the kind the subject of the song might build
internally to shut out the outside world.
Mangled guitars, writhing bass lines and crashing drums
surround Ozzy Osbourne’s rather dour vocals, which fits 13’s downtrodden mood like a velvet glove. Shifts in tempo and
melodic current occur, but they are not abrupt. Sabbath flows easily from
detour to detour, never needing a GPS to find their way back to the main road –
although it’s easy to get lost in the lush, mysterious “Zeitgeist,” the snaky conga drums and brushed acoustic guitars bringing to mind “Planet Caravan.” Sabbath’s past is omnipresent
on 13, which makes the whole musical direction of the record seem calculated and not as naturally or organically inspired as
perhaps it should appear.
Nevertheless, 13 is
a lucky number for Sabbath. With its tenacious hooks, the album bearing those numerals has given them
their first No. 1 record in 43 years. Maybe God isn’t dead after all. http://www.republicrecords.com/
–
Peter Lindblad
