THE ETERNAL IDOL

Around 1985-86, Black Sabbath's line-up was a huge mess. The album "Seventh Star" had been released with Glenn Hughes as the vocalist, but he agreed to be vocalist because the album was originally supposed to be Tommy Iommi's solo album and Hughes didn't want to be involved with the name Black Sabbath. Hughes got in a fight with the production manager and ended up with a broken orbital bone which affected his voice. He was replaced with Ray Gillen so the band could continue with their tour, which later ended up being cancelled because tickets weren't selling.

Nevertheless, the band began to work on new material as work on the album "The Eternal Idol" commenced. But the problems continued. Their producer left and was replaced and so was bassist Dave Spitz who also quit. He was replaced with Bob Daisley (Rainbow, Ozzy Osbourne) who re-recorded the bass tracks and wrote lyrics for the new album, but then he also left before the album was finished to play for Gary Moore and took Black Sabbath's drummer Eric Singer along with him. Bev Bevan (from Electric Light Orchestra) was brought in to do some drum overdubs to help finish that part of the album. Another producer left and another was hired. Then the new vocalist Ray Gillen also left to form "Blue Murder". That was when Tony Martin was brought in as the new vocalist, and finally, Black Sabbath had a regular vocalist. Martin would end up being on more Black Sabbath albums than any other vocalist except for Ozzy Osbourne. He would sing on every studio album from 1987 to 1995 (except for "Dehumanizer" released in 1992 with the return of Ronnie James Dio) singing lead for 5 studio albums.

When the dust finally settled and upon the albums release, the regular line-up left over was Tony Martin on vocals, Tony Iommi on guitar, Bev Bevan on drums and faithful, yet underappreciated Geoff Nichols on keyboards, bass and guitar. (Geezer Butler would return to the line up for a short time after in July of 1987 only to be replaced by the return of Dave Spitz.) Because of the inner turbulence during the recording of the album, there are also contributions from Ray Gillen (vocals), Bob Daisley (bass) and Eric Singer (drums) on the album. If you could follow all of those crazy changes, it is obvious the band was in a huge state of flux and this would affect the album and the tour. This upheaval would continue for many years, but at least the band had a faithful core in Tony Iommi, Tony Martin and Geoff Nicholls.

The nine tracks on "The Eternal Idol" had their lyrics written by Bob Daisley and Ray Gillen (with some modification done by Nicholls) and the music by Iommi. Even though Martin ended up doing most of the vocals, he had no other part in writing the music. The original album cover credited Dave Spitz as the bassist, but the parts were all done by Daisley.

As with the previous album "Seventh Star", the music sounds very little like the original Black Sabbath, however, the overall sound in comparison to "Seventh Star" returns to a heavier sound. "The Shining" sounds the most like previous Black Sabbath albums with a melody and structure that sounds like something Dio could be singing and has that "Rainbow" sound. "Ancient Warrior" adds more synths giving things a mysterious feel, but still retains a solid guitar and drum heaviness with a blistering solo. "Hard Life to Love" picks up the pace a bit more, and looses the atmosphere of the synth, but otherwise doesn't offer anything much different. The first half of the album ends with "Glory Ride" loosens things up a bit and recalls the Dio years again, but offers nothing to make it stand out. So after 2 pretty good tracks, there still is nothing on the first half of the album that really catches your attention or that becomes memorable. No new tricks, no memorable riffs, and nothing that resembles any level of progressive rock.

"Born to Lose" sounds like it must have been of interest for a single, faster paced and a great Iommi solo, but nothing else interesting. "Nightmare" has a moderate tempo featuring a repeating, catchy riff that soon wears out its welcome, but again reflects some of the Dio sound again. At least it has a tempo/melodic turn in it which harkens back to the original Sabbath style, but it soon reverts back to the main melody. The sinister laugh that you hear is the only audible thing that remains from Ray Gillen's involvement. "Scarlet Pimpernel" breaks the mostly unchanging sound of the album with a soft instrumental which features Iommi and atmospheric keys, it's actually one of the better post-Osbourne instrumentals, but it quickly fades after 2 minutes. "Lost Forever" brings back the expected heaviness and not much else. The album ends with the title track, the longest on the album at over 6 minutes. It is the one more evil sounding track with a slow and heavy style with vocal effects and probably the best track on the album, but unfortunately it's too little, too late.

A reissue in 2010 expanded the album by two additional tracks, both of them b-sides; the original, early version of "Black Moon" (which would show up later on the "Headless Cross" album) and "Some Kind of Woman", both songs written by Martin and Nicholls. There is also a 2nd disc which has the same songs (albeit in a different order) as sung by Ray Gillen, so you can hear how they were originally supposed to sound and choose which you like the best. There is nothing there to really hold out for though.

One of the things about Tony Martin's voice is that, even after doing several albums as the lead singer, his voice never had that unique sound that Osbourn, Dio or Ian Gillan had that would make anyone recognize it as being a Black Sabbath sound. Also, Iommi's guitar playing and riffs would become more and more standard losing their unique sound, and the band would just end up melting in with every other hard rock band out there. It's not a complete failure, but it's not one that could ever be considered essential or memorable even under regular heavy metal standards. It might be heavier than the previous album, but nothing ends up standing out at all making the album pretty average sounding. Also, at least this album was moving to another style of Black Sabbath, so for that reason it gets a 3 star rating, but this sound unfortunately never gets built upon in the future, thus future albums end up faring even worse.