BORN AGAIN

A year before the ..."Purple" reunion, Ian Gillan will record an album with "Sabbath". Not that this is not conceivable : at the end of the day hard-rock has crossed heavy metal and vice-versa very often. No, the problem is, again, the quality of the songs.

Not of "Trashed", the opener which again renews with the very good "Sabbath" opening songs : great beat, great guitar work and perfect vocals. One of the two best songs of this release. What else do we need ? Probably not the short and peaceful (?) instrumental "Stonehenge" (but this is a habbit for "Sabbath" to release such a song on each album).

Actually, one would almost missed it while listening to the rest of the album. Extremely heavy for most of it, lots of Gillan shouts (as if he could not sing...). EIommi will be the only one to be able to do anything to raise the level of this "work". Here and there a good solo of course like during "Zero The Hero" but really nothing from the other world.

A uniform and boring mood all the way through. There will be some more "Purple" influence of course like during "Digital Bitch" but we are far from a great song. The title track is also a bit more appealing. A slow-rock song with a good Gillan on the vocal command. It is probably the "best" song of the whole.

Iommi again will be the highlight on "Hot Line" and "Keep It Warm". If he weren't there, this band would have already liquified a long time ago. Thanks Tony for your incredible skills.

That's all we'll get here. Just imagine how bad the promotional tour sounded like ! They even incorporated "Smoke On The Water" in there ! Fortunately for "Purple" fans, Gillan will get back on board of the "Purple" ship very shortly after this. Maybe that he considered this as a warming up ?

The strategy of hiring Gillan will be commercially successful though. This "Sabbath" album is their best selling album for a decade. Only "Paranoïd" did better (number one). This one will peak at the fourth position in the UK charts !

Two stars. And this is a rather generous rating.