SABOTAGE

This album is a giant - for me this is where Sabbath peaked. If the band had showed signs of entering progressive territory previously with the release of "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" this confirmed that in spades. Ozzie had never and would never sound better again in the vocal department. There is a lot of anger and angst in the music here which can be easily discerned - Sabbath had been ripped off financially relating to their management and the music industry and they were obviously not happy. Also within the band itself drug and alcohol abuse had started to place members in positions at odds with one another. The rot had started to set in but the excellence of the music hadn't been impacted as yet - I wonder in fact whether the anger within the band itself didn't contribute positively to the music at that time. The music was a long way up the hill from where the band had started out. I also wonder how much of a contribution Rick Wakeman in fact actually made to the songwriting of the band through this album and the previous one. I'm not a Wakeman fan but something happened to Sabbath's music from the release of "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" through to this album and perhaps even the next release that was to notch it up more than a few scales relating to the music compositional quality - not that it was ever bad by any means but it was no longer on the same page to that of their albums previous to "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath". Whatever the recipe, this was the Sabbath that I wanted to carry the flag onwards into the future and I couldn't wait, at the time, for the release of the next offering from them. Today I have no doubts whatsoever who and what was the cornerstone and possibly the foundation of Progressive Metal - I only have to listen to this album or the previous one to ascertain that answer. Should this album have been released yesterday as opposed to back in 1975 it would be well recieved - that's how good it is in fact. A very solid 5 stars from me.