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Black Sabbath: Seventh star
23/06/14 || Dinu
Ever since I started reviewing, I always wanted to do a Black Sabbath. These guys have had a huge influence on my musical preferences and when I looked up the Sabbath reviews on GD all the good ones were taken up. Nevertheless, Seventh Star is one of those albums that sunk without a trace and it deserves redemption in my humble opinion. It might not have been one of the better albums on the Sabbath oeuvre but it does have its moments and for that, it deserves justice.
The riffs on this record are really catchy and Tony Iommi retains his magic touch and I was playing the songs over and over again. The production is too slick for its own good though and that ultimately let me down. Glenn Hughes totally ruined it for me. Ronnie James Dio and Ozzy Osbourne were both streets ahead of Hughes when it came to the vocals department and they brought in a magic touch to Iommi’s splendid riffs but unfortunately the album has a lot of weak ideas and a large part of it is due to the vocalist.
But before you reach for the jugular, I admit that Glenn Hughes is a terrific singer. But he fits in with Deep Purple and his clean vocals do wonders for that other British heavy metal band but on a Sabbath line-up, he sticks out like a sore thumb. For many such reasons, I consider this an Iommi record all the way through.
“No stranger to love” is one of my all-time favorite Sabbath songs and its slow, fantastic and heavy. “In for the kill” and “Turn to stone” are both really groovy and they are standout tracks on this album. “Seventh Star” is a stinker though. I hated the title track and its definitely not a highlight for me. This album came out in 1986 and I know that the late 80s ushered in Michael Jackson and Madonna and sounded the death knell for the original wave of heavy metal bands. Sabbath had all the talent in the world to reinvent themselves and keep the music original instead they chose to play it safe and a little experimentation might have done a world of good. Who knows it might even have ushered in a revival but instead we got a weak album that does not have any clue where its going.
“Danger Zone” is very generic and I could almost predict the riffs and it bored the hell out of me. The closing track “In memory” showed a burst of promise but it gets buried under the mind numbingly dull drumming that ruined the whole album. “Heart like a wheel” and “Angry heart” are both pretty average but these two tracks are a saving grace. They pull out this Sabbath album from disintegrating into another generic hair metal band type of the 80s.
- Information
- Released: 28 January 1986
- Label: Vertigo/ Warner Brothers
- Website: www.blacksabbath.com
- Band
- Glenn Hughes: vocals
- Tony Iommi: guitar
- Dave Spitz : bass
- Geoff Nichols: keyboards
- Eric Singer : drums
- Tracklist
- 01. In for the Kill
- 02. No Stranger to Love
- 03. Turn to Stone
- 04. Sphinx (The Guardian)
- 05. Seventh Star
- 06. Danger Zone
- 07. Heart like a wheel
- 08. Angry heart
- 09. In memory
