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ROCK AND ROLL! => Black Sabbath => All Other Eras => Topic started by: Zzzptm on January 16, 2021, 01:18:29 PM
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This is for Seventh Star. Not everyone thinks it's a proper Black Sabbath album, but because a record company exec put the words on the album cover, it kinda sorta is.
Overall, I like the songs when Glenn Hughes does them solo. And the production on this album is pretty bad... quite a disappointment.
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I don't mind 7th Star (I really like a few songs), but it really doesn't sound very Sabbathy. You can't argue that it IS NOT a Sabbath album because that's how it was released, but it SHOULD have been one of Tony's solo releases.
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^^^
Tony has always found very good players to play with...much like lets say Dave Mustaine. But Mustaine IS Megadeth, he is the main song writer and composer as well as the band leader. Tony on the otherhand never expressed much desire to be a one man show. But I would say that atleast 50% of the SOUND of Sabbath is down to Tony.
...but it SHOULD have been one of Tony's solo releases.
100% true indeed.
I've always thought that this and the Dep Sessions (which was going around the bootleg circle under the fitting banner 8th Star) were kind of like a double album really. Neither of which are all that good nor Sabbath sounding, but had Tony exploring bit more of his blues roots and more in the vein of Hard Rock that metal..
Fused again was a total Sabbath sounding album (part from Glenn ofcourse.) so that's a different story.
I think Tony wanted to do something different after Born Again and not make it Sabbath and didn't want it to sound like Sabbath either...and he succeeded. And I think Seventh Star would have probably been recieved better had it actually been a proper Tony Iommi solo album. Because then people wouldn't have expected it to sound like War Pigs and Heaven And Hell and not be massively disappointed when it didn't.
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When we're talking about putting butts in seats, it's the original lineup that does it best (with or without Ward) and the H&H lineup that comes a close second. The others never really resonated with fans.
Myself, I like Glenn Hughes as a singer and I think that he does some fantastic work, especially with ballads and funk/soul-influenced numbers. He can also do balls-out rockers, but I also think that, like Gillan, he's better suited to Purple-style material.
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Parts of it are going to sound like Sabbath, since Iommi was the composer/co-composer of a good chunk of their material regardless of era. That's going to bleed out no matter what he does, solo work or otherwise.
Z, fair point in regard to audience. I'll bet also that going from the reunion with the originals (even as it was clear that it wasn't permanent) to a completely different lineup 'featuring Tony Iommi' and no others from the most recent public lineup (save for the great Geoff Nicholls) no doubt confused and perhaps even deflated the audience.
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I really do wish that this - with the Martin stuff - had been "Tony Iommi Band" or some other such entity that separated it from the main Black Sabbath brand. It would have allowed him a lot more latitude in what he did and help to set fanbase expectations that this stuff does NOT have Ozzy or Dio in it.
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Vyn's post on the Cross Purposes thread made me think...(I know that is dangerous and should be avoided at all cost)
I do ponder IF Tony Iommi would have been allowed to make Seventh Star his solo release as it was intended would all the subsequent albums been under Tony's solo moniker as well?
I know this is a huge what if situation but still...Or was Tony always just going to intend to make one solo album and then carry on with Sabbath?
Would the Tony Martin-era stuff be more accepted and appreciated if it had been released as Iommi?
One thing it might have changed though and that is that Dehumanizer would have probably never happened then if the Black Sabbath name had been dead and buried by then.
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That’s something I’ve pondered myself and mentioned a few times on the old board over the years.
I think it all gets back to album sales. Would Iommi have sold any more or less if Seventh Star and I’ll throw in Eternal Idol as an example were released as Iommi solo albums? I suspect less given how big metal was at the time on the back of the glam and thrash movements and also the more traditional classic bands like Maiden and Priest. Would’ve metal fans who were mostly relatively new to the genre been interested in a solo guitarist album many probably didn’t even know? They knew the Sabbath name. Also it seemed if you wanted to be successful as a solo artist in metal at the time you had to be named after the singer like Ozzy, Dio and Dokken.
So I suspect Tony probably would’ve resorted back to the Sabbath name anyway with also a bit of pressure from the record company, to gain more sales which they originally were thinking in the first place.
I do think Dehumanizer still would’ve been released as Sabbath given it was the Mob Rules lineup reuniting. And who knows, it might’ve been much bigger and created more buzz than it did given it would’ve been the first Sabbath album in nearly 10 years and the Sabbath name hadn’t been dragged through the mud the previous 6 years with the change in sound/different lineups/one original member/poor sales/attendances etc.
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Don Arden and Warner Bros. were certainly of the opinion that Iommi could do whatever albums he wanted, so long as he called them Black Sabbath albums.
But, then, he went over to IRS records and could have done just about anything... and chose to be Black Sabbath there, as well. Now that there's a contract that specifies at least 3 original members need to be on the album for it to be a Black Sabbath one, Iommi is free to do solo stuff. If that contract had been in place after Born Again, then Iommi would've been freed from having to be Black Sabbath... or the record companies would just drop him if he couldn't turn up with another 2 of his former bandmates. And Dehumanizer would have been done as a non-Sabbath album, likely having poor sales and no movie tie-in.
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I do think Dehumanizer still would’ve been released as Sabbath given it was the Mob Rules lineup reuniting.
What I was thinking is that had Tony gone full solo the whole reunion might not have happened...
I think by the time the IRS thing happened Tony had already been content in carrying on with the Sabbath name..
As far as a guitar players solo stuff goes at the time I think Yngwie Malmsteen was quite popular so going out as just a solo artist as a guitar player might have worked as well...
By the late 80s traditional metal (and especially early 70s metal) started to decline (and doom metal hadn't properly risen yet) a bit with both Sabbath and Purple getting smaller and smaller...the whole thrash and hair metal movements started to tax them...Priest managed to stay afloat for a bit because they went full on commercial with Turbo and it worked eventhough it turned some old fans away it gained more new younger ones.
Sabbath got left behind a little bit...so it might have been refreshing (popularity wise) to have an IOMMI band instead...who knows.
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Thing with Malmsteen, though, was that he was still playing a Blackmore-flavored metal style, so he was marketable in that mid-late 80s commercial metal style. Iommi wanting to play a more blues-based style and to leave behind having to be metal at all costs I don't see as a viable proposition at any major label, and they weren't about to release his contract if they could milk his cow for one more record. And that record will be metal, and with a name they can market.
I'm with you in wanting Iommi to be successful as a solo act, but I think there were forces bigger than him in pushing out Seventh Star as a Black Sabbath album with a metal production on top of it.
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On facebook on a Sabbath related group we started talking about Seventh Star and I got bit attacked by a random dude saying that I (and most people I guess) don't like the album because it's different.
I answered that it's not because it's different...it's because the song writing isn't quite there and the band wasn't quite up to par.
Also it doesn't automatically mean if something sounds different that it's bad but it being bad does automatically mean bad.
But I also started thinking that might some people just give it a pass because it IS different sounding?
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I don't mind Seventh Star, but it's a little short of their best. Obviously I usually quite like Hughes, but I don't think it was his finest 35 minutes. Solid but not his usual class.
Yes it's a different album, but I don't think that's why it ranks lowly on my list.
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Presuming to have any idea about why any given individual does anything, thinks a certain way or how that person feels about anything is an automatic discussion lose in my book. As far as Seventh Star being different, yeah it sure is. So was Born Again, Heaven & Hell, Never Say Die!, etc.
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With different arrangements and production, the material can shine. As recorded, it's below expectations for a Sabbath album.
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...And for an Iommi solo album as well I'd say.
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^ 100%
And hearing the material done in different places in ways to make it shine makes me wonder how this would have been a different album if it hadn't had that music executive rushed money-grab vibe around it.