NEVER SAY DIE!

After countless comings and goings, and resignations from the wayward and personally troubled Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath found a replacement in Dave Walker (who played on a couple of songs on Fleetwood Mac's 1973 album 'Penguin' and sang in the blues band Savoy Brown between 1970 and 1972). But things didn't work out so well, and so the Prince of Darkness finally returned to the band for the release of 'Never Say Die!' (1978), the eighth album by the Englishmen.

An approachable hard rock proposal over an instrumental base that sounds hollow and insubstantial (especially Bill Ward's percussion) and which is hard to find common ground with the corrosive and dark glory days of the band.

Beyond some highlights like the energetic 'Never Say Die', the cosmic keyboards of the recently incorporated Don Airey and Tony Iommi's great guitar solo in the galloping 'Johnny Blade', or the hypnotizing riffs and choruses led by Ozzy in the heartbreaking 'Junior's Eyes' (one of the best of the album), the rest of the songs fail to take off, neither the disoriented jazzy airs of 'Air Dance', nor the pounding and joyful 'Hard Road' and 'Shock Wave', despite Iommi's efforts to decorate them with guitar solos.

The last third of the album declines noticeably, with the dull and monotonous 'Over to You', but above all with the incomprehensible instrumental 'Break Out' including some trumpets and saxophones over a sound structure that seems to have no direction, and the lacklustre 'Swinging the Chain' sung with disdain (or at least it seems so...) by Ward in the face of Ozzy's refusal to sing it himself. A pale closing for 'Never Say Die!', and also an undeserved end point between the singer and the band (interrupted by eventual reunion tours and the release of "13", 35 years later...). A pity.

2/2.5 stars

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