Just… What happened? I’m going to be honest, I have a top ten or so hip
hop albums and then I have to tap out. Still better than my track record for
country (The Legend of Johnny Cash, and even then only the songs which are
pretty much the blues) but I’m evidently not a massive hip hop fan. How
qualified am I then to just the merits of the latest Eminem album? Well, quite
a bit actually I guess. I thought that line was going to come out a lot more
confidently before I put it down, and let’s be honest, this is a word
processor. I can go back and edit it. But I won’t but it’s about as accurate as
I’ll ever get.
In the aforementioned top ten (or so, see above) hip-hop records
(because records are cool and trendy) two of the contenders are the first two
Eminem albums, The Slim Shady LP and The Marshall Mathers LP, which I guess is
going to have to be referred to in future as Mathers 1 or something. Its reputation
is being tarnished by association. To provide context I heard both albums
through a friend at the tender ages of 10 and 11 through an old friend. It was
great. My parents hated it. I had to tape the singles off of the now VERY
defunct Channel Z (because hearing The Real Slim Shady every 17 minutes
probably wasn’t enough). It was staticy as hell but I loved it. I obviously wasn’t
alone, I remember every kid conning their parents into buying a copy of Now!
That’s What I Call Music Vol. 11 or whatever to get a censored version of Stan.
This was our generation’s Rock and Roll.
Unfortunately, just like rock and roll,
hip-hop moved on to incredible lows of its very own. 2008’s reality show Flava of
Love brought Public Enemy’s Flava Flav to ‘Fat Elvis’ levels of embarrassment.
I personally checked out around The Eminem Show (although I thought the singles
were pretty decent, Cleaning out My Closet is still pretty uncomfortable and
compelling listening today). I never really listened to the album in full but
from what I can recall it is about what I’d call just about the last ALBUM to
be literally everywhere and totally permeate pop culture. The only other one I
can think of is Coldplay’s A Rush of Blood to the Head with it’s seventeen
thousand singles, admittedly a pretty good effort given the actual album only
had eleven tracks. If the first Wu-Tang album was hip-hop’s Sgt. Peppers then
The Eminem Show seemed like it was pretty much The Dark Side of the Moon. Just
Lose It from the follow up, Encore, sounded like a Scary Movie skit taking the
piss out of Eminem rather than an actual Eminem song. So silver linings I
guess, I completely wrote Eminem off then and this isn’t so bad by comparison.
Most of the things I really like about the first two Eminem records (remember:
trendy and cool. I’m building association here) I have a hard time separating from,
well, being young and happy. If they came out today and I was writing about
them instead I’m not sure I’d like them as much as I did back then. Here I am
sitting in a dressing gown at 8:20 on a Tuesday evening hoping that if I write
one more album review someone will finally love me and the only foreseeable thing
in my future is a few more decades of work followed by significantly fewer
number of decades of stroppy nurses, jigsaws, and crap fiction in large print
format. In many ways, the comparison just isn’t fair. What I CAN say
objectively about the first two albums, and probably the third as well, is that
they command attention in a way that this one doesn’t. About the only line I
can remember from this album after one listen is one about K-Fed. Who the fuck
remembers K-Fed? I don’t even think Kevin Federline remembers K-Fed. How long
was he saving THAT line for? I can pinpoint the first time I heard My Name Is,
The Real Slim Shady, Kill You, The Way I Am… just… Listen to the old albums.
Put on Kim. You feel like you’ve walked in on a murder and you just want to
leave the room before you get seen and engaged in an awkward conversation about
what you’ve just seen. Yessir mistur Mathew-sir, her ‘ead was off when I got
here, Sir (capital ess Sir.).
Whatever you’re doing you will stop doing that thing and devote full
attention to what you’re hearing. By comparison Mathers Part II is kind of like
a 78 minute 13 second elevator ride. Again, I’m not young anymore but I really
don’t think I would have really gotten into this back then either. I don’t
really think kids today will be blowing this way out of proportion fifteen
years on like people my age do with those old records. They’re probably going
to be more likely to blow those same old ones out of proportion than I am.
Which brings me to my next point: the title. No it’s not. I’ll give Mather’s
credit, there’s a line early on joking about how he named the album after the
first to make more sales. Here I am listening to it and writing about it.
Hashtag: slowclap. There aren’t the hooks. The few musical bits I remember are
samples of songs I already know (The Zombies ‘Time of the Season is probably
the least jarring). The lyrics aren’t the revelation the old one were. If I’m
being honest, even the singles kind of suck too. A verse and a half of Rap God
stacks up and The Monster is a crap redux of Love The Way You Lie from the last
record. It’s an even worse redux than Apocalypse Now: Redux was of the original
Apocalypse Now.
Granted, I didn’t hear much of the last album but what I’ve heard is
better than anything on this one. I don’t think looking backwards was the best
course. I’ve read he was aiming to get to the vibe of the old days. As fond as
the memories I have of the old days are and how far Marshall and I may have
drifted apart in the past decade I’m actually kind of happy for him. Life’s too
short to be pissed off all the time and I’m glad he’s grown up. The old days
are still there to be listened to. I guess I’m still waiting for the next Marshall
Mathers LP.
It returns. This is wordplay because you don’t even know if I’m talking
about the reviews or the band in question. And guess what? I’m not going to
tell you. Alright, so I wasn’t exactly able to do my bit in 365 CONSECUTIVE days.
Frankly I thought this would be a bit easier than it was. And now that I’ve
finally gotten to the point where I can listen to music properly again I’m
going to go and fuck it right the fucking fuck up.
Today’s album is the long awaited Black Sabbath reunion record. When we
look at the history of the band I don’t know if there’s ever been a group which
such a frustrating approach to reunion. I mean if we’re just talking about the
Ozzy line up the band has been in a state of near perpetual reunion and disbandment
for close to twenty years. Starting from the one off set on Ozzy’s first
retirement tour we have: Geezer working on Ozzmosis, Ozzy guesting on one of
the tracks on Tony Iommi’s solo album, the reunion tour (remember when there
was going to be an album coming out real soon?) and every other Ozzfest; each
punctuated with outbursts of ‘never again’ and legal hassles. In more recent
memory there is of course the surprisingly successful reunion with Dio,
resulting in the first Black Sabbath (kinda-sorta-but technically not) album
since the mostly forgotten Forbidden album in 1995, preceded by more forgotten
albums of variable quality.
So there’s a bit riding on this basically. The original line up had
something of a sound and chemistry that no one from the band has really been
able to recapture since they split in 1978. Even though both Heaven and Hell
and Born Again were three quarters the original line-up and the members
themselves had their sound still in check there was still an absence of that
unmistakable Black Sabbath Sound™.
And if I’m being honest the new tracks from the 1998 reunion were
missing that sound as well. And to be even more honest, it’s something which
was very much entrenched in the first three albums, kind of there on the next
three and gone on the final two. Frankly I’m sceptical they’ve still got it. I
have heard the lead single ‘Is God Dead?’ It’s alright. Certainly has the sound
that’s been missing since the mid 70’s. A little overlong but not bad. Nice to
have Geezer so far forward in the mix and sounding freer than he has in
decades.
So how does the rest of the album go? Let’s give it a spin.
The opening track, End of the Beginning sounds like a reader’s digest
condensed version of the entire first eight albums. It starts off like a
re-write of the song Black Sabbath from the album Black Sabbath by the band
Black Sabbath. Actually if you pay attention to the drums several fills sound
like they’re lifted directly from that song.
Which brings me to the drummer. Who is not Bill Ward. Poor guy.
Technically I could say that about just about anyone who’s not Bill Ward. I
should know, I’m not Bill Ward either and it’s a constant source of frustration
in my life. This guy however is in about the most intimidation position
imaginable by any of us non-Bill Ward’s and that is the occupation of being a
substitute Bill Ward. How does he do? Okay. Better than most other non-Bill
Wards. He’s managed to get most of the sound down and while it is obvious at
points that Real Bill would have done a better job he makes a good understudy.
He is about 70% Bill Ward. Back to the song.
It speeds up (kind of like Black Sabbath from Black Sabbath by Black
Sabbath) and then sounds a little more like something off of Paranoid through
Volume 4 and then there’s a key change that sounds like something from Sabbath
Bloody Sabbath I guess and then there’s a bit which reminds me of Dirty Women
from Technical Ecstasy I think. It reminds me of something anyway. Basically
what I’m saying is that Black Sabbath most definitely DOES blend.
Okay, so now we’re back on to the single. Amazingly enough I knew what
it was just from the opening bars after only hearing it a couple of times more
than a month ago. This is a great source of optimism for the staying power of
the album. It’s not quite as good as say Iron Man where you hear the riff once
and all of a sudden the entire song burns its way into your short term memory
forever but by this is much more than I was expecting. It’s starting to grow on
me actually.
Loner sounds somewhat familiar. As in I can almost place the riff. It
reminds me a lot of Voodoo from Mob Rules actually. There’s a lot of ‘Alright
now!’ ‘Come on, yeah!’ and ‘Alright, yeah!’ stuff which… detracts. It fits in
perfectly on Fairies Wear Boots because its spontaneous speech applied in a
spontaneous sounding manner. Here it’s just weird.
Zeitgeist is a throwback to Planet Caravan and Solitude. Here I think
it’s most obvious that everyone’s grown up a bit. Where so far (and I expect
for the rest of the album) ‘familiarity’ and remembering good times is a
recurrent theme this is the first point where they’ve missed the mark. Again,
not a diss on Not-Bill Ward, but I think that to make this song really work as
intended the crucial ingredient is real Bill Ward who really knew everyone
else’s blues talents, was a bit looser and flourished with the timing of a
track like Planet Caravan. The track is kind of necessary to the flow of the
album as a whole but it is what it is. Planet Caravan with everything way
worse.
Age of Reason is kind of what I secretly feared from a Black Sabbath reunion.
Up until the pacing changes it sounds more like a later Ozzy solo song with
some old friends lending a hand, which is what Psycho Man and Selling My Soul
sounded like. Once the pace changes it sounds like one of the bits from the
extended Wicked World set from that slightly bootleggy live album from the
early 80’s. I think this echoes what I thought of God is Dead when I first
heard it: The faster bit at the end is way better than the rest of the song,
yet takes up a minority of the track.
The other filler track is Live Forever, and let’s be honest: it’s not
bad filler. It’s better than most of Vol. 4 by a long chalk. And it actually
has the needed brevity lacking in a lot of the other tracks, narrowly the
second shortest song on the album at 4:47.
Damaged Soul is the highlight of the album for me. The bluesiest Iommi
has been since… well the first album. Harmonica! The lyrics, while still pretty
average don’t seem to take themselves anywhere near as seriously as they do on
the other tracks, relishing in the black and white horror movie tone it
presents. Also, credit to the drummer on this track. It’s actually not fair to
compare him to the other guy at this point. While there’s obviously a necessary
influence Brad does a really superb job in his own right here.
The final track on the album is Dear Father, the topical song on the
album. The high mark for topical songs by the band is undoubtedly Children of
the Grave. I’m not going to compare the two musically. That would just be
cruel. The success lyrically of Children of the Grave is the perfect blend of
the bands standard horror movie imagery with powerful protest which is as good
today as it was fourty years ago. This one (about the institutionalised abuse
of children in the Catholic Church) has a few good lines (“You preyed upon my
flesh and the prayed for my soul” is the highlight) but the music itself isn’t
a great vehicle for the message. I dig how it folds back on the rain and bell
from the first album.
Last up, the bonus tracks. Spread across a deluxe edition and a Best Buy
exclusive the four bonus tracks; Methademic, Piece of Mind, Pariah and Naiveté in
Black. I feel as though I can speak of these in the broadest terms available to
me: I can see why they were left off the album. There are some really good
riffs and lines which should have made it on to the album, either as an intro
(kind of like Embryo on Master of Reality) or cut the bonus songs to a couple
of minutes and trim some time off the overlong tracks. The lyrics are the worst
the band has done. Naiveté in Black however is at least as strong as anything
else on the album as it stands and should have been on it. The live version of
Dirty Women from the Spotify version of the album is pretty dry but it’s a funny
choice of track isn’t it?
So that’s the album track by track. So about that question at the start…
How is it as a whole? More significantly, how is it as a Black Sabbath album
and how is it as a reunion album generally? In order: decent, pretty good and
that depends on what you were expecting. This really isn’t a new Sabbath album.
This is a vintage Sabbath record and you could synthesize it with about 75% accuracy
from The Black Box or a similar collection of the bands recorded output. It’s
not a revolutionary record but where I think it excels as a reunion album is
that it’s a reunion for the listener as well. It doesn’t build on or change the
legacy of the band but I don’t think anyone was expecting the first or really
wanted the latter. I would say it’s a success as a reunion record.
To summarise some of my criticisms I feel it is paced a little poorly,
if trimmed down to the 40 minute mark along with a lot of the other Sabbath
albums (vinyl constraints) it would be the strongest work the band has done
since Master of Reality. To be fair, this was a problem on Sabotage, Vol. 4 and
a few other albums as well. The lyrics kind of go with the territory, I can’t
say I’m really that disappointed in the classical sense of the word but the
band has achieved better.
The chemistry is indeed back. As much as I dislike Rick Rubin’s post
production style (brickwalling etc. although it’s a little better here) he does
reign in his bands to their areas of expertise (example: Johnny Cash). The band
supposedly wanted to add a lot more overdubs and multitracking which meant this
could have been more of a Sabbath Technically Never Says Bloody Sabotage rather
than Black Master of Paranoid Reality Vol. 4 (which sounds like the latest in a
series of sci-fi porno thrillers). Brad did alright in the end, although he
must have been in an awkward position when it came to listening to the old
stuff for ideas and he was the only one scribbling notes furiously. Had I not
known in advance I’m not positive I would have noticed.
The big question is… What next? Another tour wouldn’t be bad, would be
keen to see Damaged Sould become the new Wicked World or something. Another
album? Not sure. I actually quite like the last two Ozzy albums but I think
most would agree this is a better conclusion to the legacy than those records.
Plus the rain cue at the end of Dear Father is pretty telling that this is a
way of closing the band off properly. If it was left here (which there’s every
indication that’s what plans to be done) I can’t think of a more fitting album
with which to do it.
