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Black Sabbath - 13 CD (album) cover

13

Black Sabbath

 

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3.74 | 354 ratings

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Rune2000
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
4 stars I was very excited when Black Sabbath announced a reunion tour and a new album on 11-11-11 (November 11th, 2011) and so began the wait for the mid-2013 release date!

The band released their first new single God Is Dead? a couple of months prior to the album release and I thought that it was a pretty decent track, even though the track was almost 9 minutes long and had little variation throughout it's first 7 minutes. End Of The Beginning was the second single and it initially sounded like the band trying to recreate the mood and sound of their band-titled track off the debut album. Eventually I've grown to like both these singles but none of them sounded like anything new nor was it all that forward-thinking.

Once I finally got a hold of the album it didn't take me long to begin enjoying it. I immediately found my favorite track off the bunch, Dear Father, which is both strong in its content and performance. The rest of the material felt like it was either in line with the two singles or was even better, which pretty much means that there are no lesser compositions among these eleven tracks! Tony delivers memorable guitar riffs, Ozzys vocals are great and Geezer/Brad provide solid foundation for the tracks. The only negative aspect that I can think of were the lyrics written by Geezer Butler which often felt quite flat, this was especially apparent on the two singles. Still, it's not a huge problem for me considering that the rest of the record is pretty solid.

If you are a fan of heavy metal music then 13 is definitely one of the top 5 albums you should be getting this year, an excellent album well worth the price of the admission. I would definitely recommend grabbing the deluxe edition of the album which features three bonus tracks, all of which are great and one of them, Methademic, even manages to show signs of excellence thanks to the riff work from Iommi. If I were Sabbath then I would call it a day and end on the high note which this record definitely represents.

***** star songs: Live Forever (4:46) Dear Father (7:20) Methademic (5:57)

**** star songs: End Of The Beginning (8:05) God Is Dead? (8:52) Loner (4:59) Zeitgeist (4:37) Age Of Reason (7:01) Damaged Soul (7:51) Peace Of Mind (3:40) Pariah (5:34)

Rune2000 | 4/5 |

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