Black Sabbath still heavy
In 1970, Black Sabbath released the album “Black Sabbath,” which started with a song called “Black Sabbath.”
In the intervening years, band members came and went, as did musical trends. Addictions, illness and reality TV. Yet so little sounded different Thursday night at the Toyota Center, where Black Sabbath played “Black Sabbath” (from “Black Sabbath”) to start its second to last show on The End, what will be its final U.S. tour.
Guitarist Tony Iommi and bassist Geezer Butler drove the heavy machinery, steering a lumbering monster sound that was years ahead of its time. And Ozzy Osbourne — inexplicably still in fine voice — served up Butler’s ominous lyrics with fresh enthusiasm and menace.
The song isn’t just any old fright stirrer. No, the creeping death prompts its narrator to wail, “Oh, no, no, please God help me.”
Years later, there is no song more black.
Farewell tours can be interminable affairs, but with Black Sabbath, The End really does look to signify the end. Three of the four original members (drummer Bill Ward and the group remain at odds) have spoken about wishing to continue. But Iommi’s health has forced them to rethink large scale touring. So one last time, they’ve taken to the road with a set of songs that was almost entirely drawn from the band’s first three albums made and released in a short spell between 1970 and 1971: “Black Sabbath,” “Paranoid” and “Master of Reality.”
As presented live, the songs revealed themselves as archetypes for two generations of subsequent heavy music: metal, doom, stoner rock — anything of a dark nature that moves along slow, lumbering guitar riffs. While Osbourne stood center stage as the beloved voice of the band, the interaction between Iommi and Butler was startling in its ingenuity. Their interplay was both muscular and nimble and formed the skeleton of this fascinating songbook.
And our rotten world has kept the songs from rusting, whether they’re about the horrors of war, more generalized evil (“Black Sabbath”) or temptations by chemicals and flesh. Befitting this grimmest of band that their love song is written from the point of view of a smitten Satan (“N.I.B.”)
All sounded crisp, heavy and vibrant despite their vintage. Osborne slipped a little behind the beat on “After Forever,” but for the most part he sounded strong. Yet now they all go away, regrettably, though it has been nice to see Sabbath enjoy a triumphant decade of overdue acclaim considering the ghastly reception the band received when it arrived back in the late 1960s. They killed the hippie dream and replaced it with something blacker.
So they’re off to San Antonio where Osbourne has some history. Then South America and back to England, Birmingham specifically, an industrial town where they first forged metal.