Black Sabbath - Mob Rules
#538
November 4 1981
By Rob Haneisen
Black Sabbath
Mob Rules
Genre: Classic metal
Allen’s Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Rob’s rating 4.5 out of 5
Highlights:
Voodoo
The Mob Rules
Sign of the Southern Cross
Falling off the Edge of the World
This is gonna run a little long but seriously, this might be the best album of 1981, at least in terms of metal or hard rock.
“Mob Rules” is the second album Black Sabbath made with Ronnie James Dio as the lead singer (with Heaven and Hell” in 1980 being one of the greatest metal albums) and it’s also the last great studio album the metal icons made. And it should be said that Sabbath is a superior band with Dio singing rather than Ozzy Osbourne.
Seriously, I’ll fight you over this point regarding Dio’s superiority. You can say that Ozzy was more of a performer and persona but the band sounds better, tighter with Dio and his voice is rightly heralded as one the top three in metal and rock. The only thing Ozzy has over Dio is about a foot in height and probably a hundred pounds during his bloated, boozy shamble-stalk singing and wailing. I like Ozzy. He has a keen pop sensibility for a metal or hard rock singer and his distinctive high-pitched delivery works so well. But Dio musters such a huge sound with incredible range. There is power in that voice that meshes perfectly with and sometimes acts as a counterbalance to the sludge, doom, and heavy blues bombast of Sabbath.
OK, onto the actual album. “Mob Rules” is Sabbath’s album that focuses on the breakdown of society. Evil forces are afoot, and there’s really nothing to stop them. There’s chaos, discord. We have precise and then sometimes-frenetic solos of Tony Iommi and the galloping and pronounced basslines of Geezer Butler. Honestly, after listening to this album about 10 times in the past two weeks I gained a whole new appreciation for Butler’s bass presence in Sabbath. He propels so many songs.
If you have even a passing ear for 80s rock radio then you already know the two big songs from this album “The Mob Rules” and “Voodoo.” Both open with an instantly recognizable Sabbath guitar riff, and while “The Mob Rules” is distinctly up-tempo, “Voodoo” is a mid-tempo foreboding piece. On both tracks, Dio’s voice as absolutely mammoth. It’s a controlled scream, that shakes into blues or into a rapid delivery of lyrics. Just try singing along to it with the intensity and sheer volume he puts out and you’ll be winded in 10 seconds. He is a freak of nature.
Beyond those two hits, there are two more excellent songs here with “Sign of the Southern Cross” and “Falling off the Edge of the World.” Both are the same style of slow-building Sabbath epic. Both are marked by blistering Iommi solos and pace changes as if the song was designed with the formula of “prime the pump and then blast off.”
So why the hell did I not give this album 5 stars? Simple, it’s flawed. Some of the songs don’t work either in entirely or by pieces. Sabbath was also a bit of a victim of their own success trying to follow up “Heaven and Hell”, which is a 5-star album by miles.
I also quibble with producer Martin Birch’s ordering of the songs and some editing here. More on that later.
For the songs, the album opens with “Turn up the Night” which is a good song but it is basically trying to be “Neon Nights” and it falls a bit short there. Next up is the sinister and heavy-blues influence of “Voodoo.” Then it transitions well into the building power of “Sign of the Southern Cross” which startles a bit with Dio’s gentleness of voice at the beginning before crashing like a wave of distortion and giant riffage.
Things get weird and psychedelic with the ambient doom of the instrumental track “E5150,” which has an ending that clumsily falls into “The Mob Rules.” The title track is just sheer power, speed, and probably the most iconic song on the album.
The next two songs are head-scratchers for their mediocrity and the fact that they just don’t fit with this album. “Country Girl” sounds like a leftover from the Ozzy era and “Slipping Away” honestly sounds like something Foreigner would put out. It’s practically poppy.
Tracks 8 and 9 close out the album in doom-sludge, symphonic style with “Falling off the Edge of the World” and “Over and Over”. The album closer is a slower-paced piece until Iommi goes absolutely batshit crazy with a mega guitar solo that just keeps going until the album fades to black.
If I was producing this album, I would change the track ordering to give a bit more of a journey for the listener and do a bit of slice-editing to at least one track.
Here’s my “Mob Rules” track listing:
1. “E5150” (If you listen to “Live Evil” you know how perfectly this works as an opening song.)
2. “Falling off the Edge of the World” (However, I would cut the song’s length by hacking off the first 1:20 which is kind of a weak and sensitive sounding bit and go right for the heaviest part of the song and very dark guitar before breaking into a much quicker paced song. In my opinion, it cuts the fat off the meat of the song.)
3. “The Mob Rules” – We’ve set up chaos with the first two tracks, now let’s really go after it.
4. “Sign of the Southern Cross” – It’s a good catch-your-breath-moment after those last two songs.
5. “Turn up the Night” – Pick up the pace again.
6. “Slipping Away” – I would honestly be happy with either this song or the next track not being on this album, but I think it works OK here if it is set up by the radio-friendly “Turn up the Night.”
7. “Country Girl” - Ehh, it’s got to go somewhere, and it does sound like a good Sabbath song, just a bit dated.
8. “Voodoo” – Building up the evil undertones again with some wicked heavy blues.
9. “Over and Over” – This is really the perfect album closer.
“Mob Rules” and the subsequent tour that became the “Live Evil” album shows you what Sabbath could have done if they stayed with Dio. It’s a shame he left or was kicked out or whatever. His solo stuff was phenomenal so at least we have that. Sabbath never really returned to greatness. This truly was their last hurrah, but it’s a fantastic trip.
https://open.spotify.com/album/2hGCBR6Xd1RuoYvwcfUhWq?si=eQmCE4XnQiGiPejmWP4Jag
