Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Rainbow - Stranger in Us All

Rainbow - Stranger in Us All - 1995

From the very first track, "Wolf to the Moon", it's obvious that Blackmore has been itching to rock. Judging from the terrible, wretched pap that he was forced to get behind with Deep Purple I don't blame him. There's a certain southern twang to Stranger that seems like the normal next step for aging rockers. "Stand and Fight" could be a Foghat song.
I haven't really enjoyed a Rainbow album since Down To Earth and that was nowhere near as good as the band's singular best, Rising. On this swan song (Blackmore would retreat to a new project, Blackmore's Night, which I have no intention of ever hearing) he's loaded for bear. He's rocking out. If it's the last time he's going to, then by god, he's gonna show the world what he can do.
He's got a new lead singer, Doogie White, and while he isn't best, he serves the tracks well.
The music is better than anything Blackmore's offered in decades. The playing is stellar. There's no more pandering to radio. Or searching for an audience to validate him over Jon Lord.
Like a song like "Ariel". A lovely elegy with a hint of mid-east overtones, so the experimentation is still there but it's not about that. it's about serving the muse.I even enjoy the rock version of Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King". Cuz, Blackmore seems to love it.
Like I said, serving the muse. And the album does just that. Blackmore saved his best rock album for last.

Grade: A
ASide: Wolf to the Moon, Ariel, Black Masquerade
BlindSide: Cold Hearted Woman, Hunting Humans

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Black Sabbath - Forbidden

Black Sabbath - Forbidden - 1995

I worked with Ice T once. I was a guest on his show "Players". We had a nice chat. Seems like a nice guy.

And he's featured on the bridge of easily the most annoying Sabbath song ever, "The Illusion of Power". Uninspired. Insipid. Bored.
But, why is he on here? Rappers on Metal albums? Man, the 90s sucked.
Song after song this record is filled with 1000 megawatt suckage. "Shaking Off the Chains" doesn't even sound like a Sabbath song. Hell, it sounds like some 4th rate metal band you'd hear on Rotten Records in the 90s. Poorly mixed, poorly mastered, poorly written, just unlistenable tripe. In fact, that's an insult to Acid Bath and D.R.I. This is much much worse.
The worst thing on this record isn't the band or the music, although that's pretty awful. No. it's Tony Martin's insipid lyrics and his below par warbling. he ruins an already terrible record.
And then, just when you've gotten used to just how bad this monstrosity is, the band tries to go radio friendly, soaring solos with "Sick and Tired" which not only sucks, but describes how I feel by the time it shows up.
Iommi gave it up after this. Sabbath was done. And, truly, none too soon.

Grade: D-
ASide:
BlindSide:
DownSide: The Illusion of Power, Get a Grip, Shaking off the Chains, Rusty Angels

Review Number 424

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Dio - Strange Highways

Dio - Strange Highways - 1995

Metallica really invigorated the medium, didn't they? All that 80s pop-metal posturing has been tossed out the window in the 90s as bands like Sabbath, Ozzy and Dio go for a harder and harder sound.

Strange Highways opens, as so many Dio records do, with the barn burner "Jesus, Mary and the Holy Ghost". It's less a song than it is a laceration, an open wound bleeding with contempt for that who inflicted the wound in the first place. It's followed by some of the most aggressive and ugly music the genre can muster. "Firehead" is not only hard to listen to, it's difficult to follow. It's as though Dio has decided in the war of Metallica vs Megadeth, he will follow the latter. Only to turn back to his Iron Maiden stylings with the epically sludgy title track.
I think I just don't like Dio. There's so little to hold on to. it's like every album is another take on the same themes and style. Which is to say, it all sounds like Ripper Owens era Priest to me now. Well, maybe not Demolition. But it's just as ugly on the inside.

Grade: C-
ASide: Jesus Mary and the Holy Ghost
BlindSide: Give her the Gun
DownSide: Evilution

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Black Sabbath - Cross Purposes

Black Sabbath - Cross Purposes - 1994

So, Sabbath decides to open for Ozzy, who is now an international bat biting superstar. Dio thinks this is beneath the band and he up and quits.
What does Iommi do? He brings back his co-hort in the band's best recent material, Tony Martin.
The result?
Another dark metal entry to the band's catalog. It's very riff heavy and I get the feeling that Iommi just sits in a room spitting out licks but the well is running dry....

Cross Purposes is no great shakes. If you want that go to Eternal Idol or Headless Cross. But, if you want amore of that that isn't as good but isn't awful, this'll do fine.

Grade: C+
ASide: The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
BlindSide: Cross of Thorns, Cardinal Sin
DownSide: Dying for Love

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - The Battle Rages On

Deep Purple - The Battle Rages On - 1992

Oh, just look at the album cover. If there was ever anything that screamed "Sell out!" it's that. One thing I've learned from this series that the roots of Heavy Metal are deep not in the blues, but in psychedelia. Go back and listen to those early DP and BS records and you'll know what I'm talking about.
So, it's distressing to see the architects of Heavy Metal consign themselves to the easiest of the genre's tropes: Medieval mythology.
And the music is following suit. This is, I believe, a good thing for the most part. Gillan sounds less like the Gillan we've come to love and more like...Brian Johnson and Joe Perry. Allmusic said it best when it compared them to Def Leppard. Hey, at least they've shrugged off the Foreigner obsession.
This is a Blackmore-centric record, which harkens back to a harder sound ala Machine Head. The songs aren't nearly as interesting, however. And there's even one called, gasp, "Lick it Up". It's not as bad as the title, but holy hell, guys.
Late in the album on "Solitaire" the band finds their proggy-trippy roots and manage to sound, well, like they wanna play with Rush, but at least its not Foreigner, right?
The playing is fine. The album is almost completely unengaging.

Grade: C-
ASide: The Battle Rages On
BlindSide: A Twist in the Tale
DownSide:

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Black Sabbath - Dehumanizer

Black Sabbath - Dehumanizer - 1992

Dammit. Dio.

You know, if right after Mob Rules Sabbath had put out another album with the same lineup I would probably have been excited.
That was before I had to slog through 38 solo albums by the metalelf.
So, now we're back to that lineup. And coming off the heels of two great records and one interesting quasi-concept one, what do we get?
Well, it's 1992, so it's time for someone to complain about computers, right? "Computer God", check. And there's social consciousness as well. On TV Crimes the band takes out televangelists. There's something odd to me about that. After all these guys were like a cultish religion unto themselves. They started off trafficking in miring themselves in pagan
ideology and iconography. And know they are condemning it. It feels...wrong.
Dio doesn't sing about D&D imagery but what he's choosing, the above concepts and such shitty lyrics like the ones on "Letters From Earth" make me so angry. This was a band that, for 2.5 albums were really on the cutting edge. They deserved their resurgence. They deserved their mantle of Godfathers of Metal.
Then Dio comes in and shits all over everything. A great riff like "Master of Insanity"'s is marred by not only Dio's self-indulgence but also his crappo lyrics and complete dearth of melody. On the other hand, "Time Machine" is a catchy metal number, and "After All (The Dead)" is an ear splitting treat. But, beyond that, this one just screams for a band to put away their toys and hang it up.

Grade: D
ASide:
BlindSide: After All (The Dead)
DownSide: TV Crimes, Master of Insanity, Buried Alive

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Ozzy Osbourne - No More Tears

Ozzy Osbourne - No More Tears - 1991

Xylophones and toys are scary. Let's face it. Ever since Poltergeist we've known that. That's how No More Tears starts out. The hyper-demonic "Mr. Tinkertrain" sets the table with a song from the perspective of a child abuser and the album never relents from there.
This is Ozzy's comeback. He's finally over Randy Rhodes's death and he's reinventing himself as the heir apparent to all things metal.
He succeeds spectacularly.
No More Tears is a big record. It requires that you play it loud.
Not only is Zakk Wylde a major contributor to the songwriting but his playing is inspired. And Ozzy's no dummy. He's brought in Lemmy Kilmeister as a lyricist on a bunch of tracks.
And it all works. The massive soundtrack to MTV montage lifestyle amid images of returning soldiers from the first Iraq war, "Mama I'm Coming Home" just plain wins. There's more radio friendly metal-ness on the title track and S.I.N. but I think my favorite track is the cheeky, percussive "Zombie Stomp". Sure, it's dumb, but they know it's dumb and there's a weird Michael Jackson quality to it.
I know. Go figure.
Ozzy's comeback is great. A worthy addition to any metal collection.

Grade: A
ASide: Mr. Tinkertrain, Mama I'm Coming Home
BlindSide: I Don't Want to Change the World, Zombie Stomp, A.V.H., Road to Nowhere

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - Slaves and Masters

Deep Purple - Slaves and Masters - 1990

I'm so tired. It's not because of a new baby or life or work. It's because of the chore I have set out for myself. When it can be quickly become invigorated by, say, the resurgence to greatness by Black Sabbath on The Eternal Idol or Headless Cross, my disposition can just as quickly turn to despondence by listening (or forcing myself to listen to) whatever Deep Purple has turned themselves into.
Basically, they are Foreigner. Without the hooks.
From the very beginning they just sound out of date. 10 years out of date. And I don't know why. I mean, I know why. It's because they sound like a Foreigner influenced band 10 years after Foreigner mattered. What I don't know is why they turned away from their teeth, the razor sounds of Ritchie Blackmore vs Jon Lord and turned themselves into this. Except that I always felt like Purple was above the fray. Like they believed themselves to be "important" musicians. Akin to Genesis, pre-Collins.
No matter. If you like watered down prog-rock or were wishing for another Foreigner record, this is for you.
If not, skip it.

ASide: Fire in the Basement
BlindSide: Wicked Ways
DownSide: Love Conquers All (Holy Treacly Hell)

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Black Sabbath - Tyr

Black Sabbath - Tyr - 1990

Nothing you have heard from Black Sabbath is really gonna prepare you for Tyr. What seems to be a concept album about Norse mythology is much more than that. The band denies any conceptualizing or thread but it seems so obvious. So what is it? Some of the heaviest and most complex production in the history of the band pervades this record. It's epic.
Shunting the production values of the previous decade with abandon on the previous two records, Iommi, Nichols, Martin and Cozy Powell raise the stakes with overlays, overdubs, thick walls of gothic ambience, Tyr is meant to be played loud. Excuse me, LOUD.
One moment the record is almost elegiac, the next it's a pummeling driver that would make Motorhead proud. Especially on a song like "The Law Maker".
The record gets a little flabby toward the middle but, somehow, never falls prey to the indulgences of, say, Kiss's The Elder or the obnoxious self importance of Judas Priest's Nostradamus.
Not my favorite Sabbath album, but by no means an embarrassment. Of course, if you are expecting Headless Cross or Sabbath Bloody Sabbath or Paranoid or even The Eternal Idol or Sabotage, it's not that. No way.

Grade: B+
ASide: Anno Mundi, Valhalla
BlindSide: The law Maker
DownSide:

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Dio - Lock Up The Wolves

Dio - Lock Up the Wolves - 1990

This record explodes with power at the outset. "Wild One" is a barnburner and makes me just hope that the rest of the album can keep up with it. It's more likely a testament to new guitarist Rowen Robertson than RJ, honestly. But, like I said on the No Rest for the Wicked review, it's hard for a lead singer to be the musical catalyst. Their instrument is their voice and they are always dependent on the abilities of their hired guns.
But, I know, this is 1990. It's the dawn of the era of CD as king and there's a reason this album clocks in at one hour. The disc, the price demand it. And have no fear, by the second song we are mired in mid-tempo largesse. Apparently, Dio or someone he knows was "Born on the Sun" and he's just gotta sing about it. Its not like this is a bad album. It's just...dull. I've heard it. And while I enjoy this kind of music, I really feel like Dio's said everything he needs to say.
The ballad, "Between Two Hearts" is the kind of phone it in borefest that has given metal a bad name, I just thought that needed saying. And the epic "Lock Up the Wolves", with it's ticking clock intro and outro, is just 7 minutes of snooze. More often than not, Dio sounds like he's aping Freddie Mercury doing his metal thing. "Evil on Queen Street" (hmmm....) just makes you wonder how much better it would have sounded with Freddie on the mic. Whereas "Walk on Water" is actually a treat, that's only because it showcases the band more than any other.

Grade: C-
ASide: Wild One, Walk on Water
BlindSide:
DownSide: Born on the Sun, Night Music