Black Sabbath - Born Again

Born Again was Black Sabbath’s third (or forth) attempt at rejuvenating the Black Sabbath moniker with a new lead vocalist, this time featuring former Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gillian.

The pairing sounds great on paper, but Born Again is proof that lightning does not strike twice-even when the men in the clouds are responsible for two of the most important hard rock bands in history.

Born Again begins with “Trashed,” another one of Gillian’s “shit that happened while we were recording the album” lyrics (see the much, much better “Smoke On The Water”). Tony Iommi shows signs of Side One/Track One fatigue (typically, his shinning moment) by lifting an almost identical riff to “Neon Nights,” the first song of Dio's tenure.

“Trashed” details an incident where Gillian arrived to the Manor Studios drunk, took Bill Ward’s car and crashed it on a closed go cart track on the grounds. Before you start laughing that he wrecked the thing on a fucking go cart track, add to your visuals the sight of said car exploding into flames as Gillian walked from the wreckage.

The close encounter with death didn’t seem to impact Gillian, who uses the lessons he learned from the incident to "thank Mr. Miracle" (this is a Black Sabbath album, after all, no thanking the Lord) and getting back to some additional inebriation.

The prose was captured on a napkin, including this intriguing couplet:

"Went back to the bar and hit the bottle again but there was no tequila
And started on the whiskey just to steady our brains ‘cuz there was no tequila.”

Evidently, Gillian was too drunk to realize that he ended one line with the exact same one he just finished.

“Trashed,” by the way, is the best song on Born Again.

When you’re faced with a brush with death, the next thing you do is follow up the song with a song about Stonehenge.

Much has been said about the pointless instrumental track “Stonehenge” and how it inspired the infamous Stonehenge stage set in Spinal Tap, but nobody seems to point out how the other instrumental track “The Dark” features a guest appearance by Chewbacca.

“Disturbing The Priest” addresses an incident where Sabbath received a bunch of complaints by a neighborhood priest while practicing at their rehearsal space. It features Gillian endlessly cackling and wailing "disturbing the prieeeeestyeaaaahhhh" repeatedly while Iommi struggles to find a riff to work with. It’s as if everyone had a good laugh coming up with the song title, but nobody thought about finishing the tune.

That’s a good representation of Born Again, a record devoid of any memorable tunes, riffs, or lyrics. It is an embarrassment to everyone involved and it suggests that all parties involved must immediately forfeit their rights from ever using the name Black Sabbath or Deep Purple again. It is the work of grown men acting like monkeys with Born Again a metaphoric turd being thrown at anyone who bought a ticket to this ammonia scented zoo.

The album artwork has correctly been singled out as one of the worst covers in the history recorded music, but the reality is that it is nothing compared to the horrorshow found on the music inside.