CROSS PURPOSES LIVE (CD + VHS)

I personally find the Tony Martin Sabbath albums highly enjoyable, some of them I rate as being among Sabbath's finest records, so it saddens me time and time again when I come across another Martin-era live recording, albeit official or bootleg, where his songs obtain a small portion of the set list. There's no difference here.

'Cross Purposes Live' has always amused me as it's not Cross Purposes live at all, there're only three tracks present from that album here: 'I Witness' (great track and a great rendition of it live), 'Psychophobia' (another good track although a bit on the short side), and 'Cross of Thorns' (A good ballad). You can probably guess that I rate the album Cross Purposes highly, and that's because it's a great album, probably Sabbath's most underrated album, so surely 'Cross Purposes Live' should promote more material from it; Martin himself says during the concert about the new record that 'that's what tonight's all about', I could go on but I wont, after all it's probably Iommi's fault for not having enough faith in the new material.

So there are only FIVE Martin-era songs on here, and only four make it to the CD, why 'The Shining' isn't on here I don't know. Perhaps the reason is that Martin is suffering from a throat infection, whatever it was he wasn't well during this tour and it really shows during tracks such as 'Anno Mundi' where he dodges all the high notes, the once epic track reduced to an average number.

It's a shame because Tony Martin will probably never get the gratification he deserves, all the albums he was on weren't pushed enough and even now the majority of them are out of print (including this album). As for the CD, it's a decent and enjoyable performance that could have been better; it's great to see tracks such as 'The Wizard' and 'Symptom of the Universe' on here and the band do a fine performance throughout.

Top Three Tracks:

1) I Witness 2) Cross of Thorns 3) The Wizard