Black Sabbath - Never Say Die! - Album Review

Floyd

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Days before a new album was about to be recorded, Ozzy Osbourne announced his withdrawal from the band:

"The last Sabbath albums were just very depressing for me. I was doing it for the sake of what we could get out of the record company, just to get fat on beer and put a record out. "

~ Ozzy Osbourne

Osbourne was replaced by Dave Walker, formerly of Fleetwood Mac, but this wouldn’t last for long. In the meantime, Osbourne had been making plans for a solo career, but only a few months later, just as the new Black Sabbath was about to try starting anew, he changed his mind. Rejoining in early ’78, the return of the vocalist made the original formation complete again, but the problems that had ever plagued the band since Vol. 4 were about to take their final toll. It had been only a matter of time before drugs would drive the group and their creativity apart, and mar the recording of the band’s eighth album:

"It took quite a long time. We were getting really drugged out, doing a lot of dope. We'd go down to the sessions, and have to pack up because we were too stoned, we'd have to stop. Nobody could get anything right, we were all over the place, everybody's playing a different thing. We'd go back and sleep it off, and try again the next day."

~ Tony Iommi

Eventually though, the new effort Never Say Die! was completed. It release and subsequent world tour did not fare well. Black Sabbath were now being described as ‘tired and uninspired’, a stark contrast from the band’s glory days earlier in the decade. And indeed, when listening to their eighth album, one could not do other than fell the very same judgement. Never Say Die! sounds like it’s being played by a tired, worn out group who have completely lost inspiration, and it is equally tiring to listen to it. Gone are Iommi’s monstrous riffs of doom. Gone are Butler’s prominent, outstanding bass skills. Gone is the tolerability of Osbourne. Gone are Ward’s always satisfying drum fills. It is this record that showed that, inevitably, Black Sabbath was as dead as a doornail. Less than ten years earlier with the releases of Black Sabbath, Paranoid and Master of Reality, Black Sabbath were the first march of heavy metal. At the end of the 70’s, they had turned into an average rock ‘n’ roll band recording tiring material. The opener title track is already a laughable attempt to create a powerful start, and it doesn’t get any better from there. Junior’s Eyes, for example, tries to be epic, but falls flat on its face, and by the time we’ve come to the brass arrangements on Breakout, which are far from interesting, we’ve completely given up. On this record, Black Sabbath officially stopped being Black Sabbath. Apart from Osbourne recognizable (and very annoying) performance, you wouldn’t even guess this is a Sabbath record. Such talent wasted. It is a shame.

Things weren’t about to get better. Sabbath spent nearly a year trying to convey a new record, and with Osbourne’s behaviour growing out of bounds, Iommi made the decision he could have made after Sabotage. He fired Ozzy Osbourne.

"At that time, Ozzy had come to an end. We were all doing a lot of drugs, a lot of coke, a lot of everything, and Ozzy was getting drunk so much at the time. We were supposed to be rehearsing and nothing was happening. It was like 'Rehearse today? No, we'll do it tomorrow.' It really got so bad that we didn't do anything. It just fizzled out."

~ Tony Iommi

As such, a problem-ridden band broke down, and no one knew what the future could possible hold…

Tracklist for Never Say Die!:

1. Never Say Die

2. Johnny Blade

3. Junior's Eyes

4. Hard Road

5. Shock Wave

6. Air Dance

7. Over to You

8. Breakout

9. Swinging the Chain

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Well, I have mixed feelings about this album, so I'll try to come up with a coherent opinion. Objectively, this album is terrible. Bad sound, bad performance, terrible songwriting, etc. However, I follow a website called "Brad's Completely Useless Record Reviews". The owner of the page gave "Never Say Die" a seven and said that, while this album is terrible, is so bad that it becomes good. That the album is really entertaining in its "terribleness". I decided to listen to it with that mindset, and guess what? It is entertaining. This work is bad, but is so uniquelly bad that I can enjoy it. Compare it with their post "Mob Rules" output, which sucks and it's also boring and generic. However, there are songs that I genuinely like here. "Air Dance" is beautiful, and the only true, "unironical" classic here. The title track rocks and is catchy and uplifting. "Junior's Eyes" has cool bass and drum parts and the wah effect is mesmerizing. "Breakout" is really interesting for the inclusion of sax and brass sections. "Johnny Blade" hides a cool multipart song behind the nasty sound quality, the stupid and dated synths and the distortion of the guitar. The other songs are abysmal, but they can be considered a guilty pleasure. "Shock Wave" has an idiotic melody with mutilated guitars, but the mix of the usual Sabbath heaviness with the poppy vocal performance is funny. "A Hard Road" is mildly catchy and definitely overlong, but listening to Black Sabbath making an optimistic song full of vocal harmonies is hilarious. "Over to You" mix the guitars of "Hard Road" with the piano of "Air Dance", and that combination is so out of place that I can have a good time with it. Last and definitely least, "Swinging the Chain" is a blues song, but you can only tell in which style is set because of the harmonica and the (terrible) vocal performance of Bill Ward, since the vomit inducing sound of the guitar makes impossible not only to guess the melody, but also the genre it's supossed to be playing. In conclusion, I used to hate this album, and I still do it in a certain way, but is so full of strange and unique ideas by the standards of this band that it's quite an experience. My advice? Don't listen to "Never Say Die" expecting a good album and you'll enjoy it plenty. Still, I can't give it the seven that the reviewer I mentioned gave it, since that score is only for genuinely good music. Final score: a four out of ten in objective terms, a six out of ten for the fun it provides.
 
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