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Happy 20th, Cross Purposes!
Today is January 31, 2014. That means that 20 years ago, it was Jan 31, 1994. And on that date, came the penultimate studio Black Sabbath album in the Tony Martin era of the band, Cross Purposes! I'm not doing a full retrospective, because I'm a bit too busy to write about it on its actual birthday, but I couldn't let this album pass unremarked. This album's production was a bit interesting. After the fall of the Dehumanizer reunion in late 1992, an awful lot of talk was bandied about … [Read More...]
Happy 30th, Born Again!
Today is August 7, 2013 (Well it was when I started writing this, it got too long, and it came out on August 8th). Thirty years ago today was the original release of one of the more polarizing albums in the history of Black Sabbath, that being Born Again. I was a recent Black Sabbath fan at that point. My original "onramp" to Black Sabbath was the Mob Rules album. Oh sure, there was Live Evil after that, but the first new, studio album by Black Sabbath was Born Again after I had become a … [Read More...]
Happy 30th, Holy Diver!
Today (March 25th) is the 30th anniversary (in the United States anyway) of the original release of the first, and arguably the best Dio album, "Holy Diver". Man, thirty years, eh? I know time is the enemy that marches on, never stopping, never ceasing, but when you reach milestones like that about things from your youth, they're reminders of where we've come from. … [Read More...]
An Angel is Missing – A Dio Career Retrospective
If you've been following me for awhile (and especially on Twitter), you'll know I like to post playlists. Given my overall music collection is so gigantic, I generally have a playlist for every band I like. I've posted several of them to twitter. However, this afternoon when I was thinking about Ronnie James Dio, I thought that it's hard to pigenhole him into a single playlist. You've got Dio, you've got Black Sabbath, there's Rainbow, and Elf. Not to mention the really older stuff like The … [Read More...]
Behind the Scenes of “The Shining” Video Shoot
A very interesting piece of video cropped up today in my inbox, I wanted to share it immediately. As you might remember, 1987 was a very turbulent year in the band's history. The album that came out that year (The Eternal Idol) turned out to be a quite solid release, despite it's gestational nightmare. In late October of 1987, the band turned up at Docklands in London to shoot a music video for "The Shining", which was the first single off the new album. But even that was difficult. At that … [Read More...]
Biohazard’s After Forever
Back in 1971, Black Sabbath released their third album, Master of Reality. On that album is one of the more unusual songs in the band’s entire recorded catalogue, that being “After Forever”. After Forever is interesting, because in all the songs that Sabbath has recorded, it's the only released one that has lyrics that are directly pro-Christian in nature. That song has always spoke to me for that reason, so I was quite pleased when I read that it was to be covered in 1994 by the New York … [Read More...]
Welcome to the New Site!
Welcome to the new version of the Black Sabbath Online website. This has been a long time coming. For a couple of reasons. The old site has been here a long time. It's served me and the community well, but it was launched in January of 2000, and given this is January 2012, TWELVE years later, it has been overdue for a fresh coat of paint. There's also a few parts of the old site which are just broken, and needed replacing. It was definitely TIME. To those who said "What's wrong with … [Read More...]
About Henry
If you're a Black Sabbath fan, especially a long time one, you've seen Henry a bunch of times. Thing is, most people didn't know he's called Henry. He's something akin to Iron Maiden's "Eddie", although Henry has never come out on stage live. :) Henry is of course the "flying devil" or "flying angel" or whatever you want to refer to it. It's a logo that's been in use for a long time, and that was a point of contention with me. WHEN was the first time we saw Henry? The earliest I could … [Read More...]
Before There was Elf…
Those of you who have been following this site for awhile know of my affinity for trying to present the entire story, not just bits and pieces, or just selected parts. Well, that's why this piece is of particular interest to me. I've been following Ronnie James Dio's career for a long time. First hopped on board in 1981, and followed his work until he died in 2010. Pretty much everyone knows about his Rainbow & Black Sabbath careers. Some know about his Elf material before Rainbow, but … [Read More...]
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