SABBATH BLOODY SABBATH

This helped me in the transition from hard rock fan to prog rock fan. SABBATH BLOODY SABBATH takes these prog rock sensibilities and merges them wonderfully with the heavy hard rock metal sound they've been developing for their whole career. The songs are still riff heavy, but carry much depth to them. Don't believe me? Take a listen to ''A National Acrobat'' as each riff and idea spoils you with catchy accessibility and cerebral pings in one swoop.

For my money, Ozzy has never sounded better here. Most people seem to undermine his singing ability, and while today his voice is marginal at best, back in his Black Sabbath days, he was a competent, powerful vocalist. ''Sabbra Cadabra'' is one of his best vocal performances to date, only to be outdone by ''The Writ'' on the following album. Tony Iommi has also taken a more in-depth approach to his guitar riffs as he gives a wonderful acoustic piece in ''Fluff'' (one of the first acoustic solos I've heard, so there's bias here), turned up the heaviness in ''Killing Yourself to Live'' and elaborated the riff pretty much everywhere.

I find ''Who Are You?'' the only slump here; the synth lines are annoying. ''Looking for Today'' would've fared much better had the production been so much better. Hearing an orchestra on ''Spiral Architect'' might sound odd, but it works so well. I may hold bias towards Black Sabbath as they were one of the first hard rock bands I really took to heart, but just the way that SABBATH BLOODY SABBATH was constructed ought to have progsters at least somewhat interested.