Black Sabbath 13

Black Sabbath may be my favorite band of all time. Yet, when it was announced that the band was getting back together with Ozzy, I couldn't help but let out a groan. This was sure to be embarrassing. Ozzy has turned into a cartoon, and his solo albums have gotten progressively worse since 1983's Bark At The Moon, with his more recent album being unlistenable. Add in all of the shenanigans that Ozzy's wife has pulled over the years, and I'd grown to really hate anything that they had a hand in. Still, it was Black Sabbath. It was still Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler. As much as I expected Ozzy to be a giant, stinking turd on the entire thing, I still needed to check it out.

As we got closer to release day, I let my guard down, and I found myself looking forward to it. Rick Rubin was involved and was driving the band back to their roots. He forced the band to listen to their first couple of albums, and challenged them to get into that state of mind, and write a follow up album to what they heard. It was tempting to get sucked into the hype, and on release day I found a download and listened to the first four songs on my drive to work. I could not believe what I was hearing. This was everything that I'd wanted from a new Sabbath album, and absolutely crushed my low expectations. Even Ozzy manages to not sound completely auto-tuned and over processed.

As soon as I got my first chance at work, I was out the door and headed to the record store. 20 minutes later I owned both the vinyl and deluxe CD of 13.

From the doomy greatness of End Of The Beginning, the trippy, and quickly becoming one of my favorites, Zeitgeist, the amazing guitar tone and solo in Age Of Reason, and the harmonica in Damaged Soul...man, this thing just gets better with each listen. Well done.