Never Say Die! - Song by Song

[Zzzptm]

I'll have to part company with KDC and Typhon on Air Dance. It's a reluctant Ozzy vocal on top of the Tony Iommi Jazz Trio doing some exploratory fusion work. Somehow, though I enjoy jazz and I enjoy rock, I have never come to enjoy jazz fusion. Jazz-funk, absolutely yes. But fusion? Nope.

[Charger]

Air Dance is indeed Black Sabbath trying to do Jazz fusion...

But this song makes Ian Gillan's Child In Time album look like a masterpiece.

What an utter turd this song. Bad vocals from Ozzy, horrid lyrics and musically awful.

Here's a prime example why this album sounds NOTHING like Black Sabbath. Burn after listening.

[Zzzptm]

Air Dance is indeed Black Sabbath trying to do Jazz fusion...

But this song makes Ian Gillan's Child In Time album look like a masterpiece.

What an utter turd this song. Bad vocals from Ozzy, horrid lyrics and musically awful.

Here's a prime example why this album sounds NOTHING like Black Sabbath. Burn after listening.

OOOOOOOooooooooooooooooohhhhh that Child in Time album is a nasty piece of crap.

But a valid comparison. Fusion was all over the place in the mid-late 70s. Nasty business, that fusion. Thank goodness for punk!

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

Over to You follows and it's another great song that took me years to fully appreciate. I like the simple riff (no solo as such), and the underlying keyboards occasionally come to the fore, but Geezers bass really stands out here. Lyricly on similar territory as Juniors Eyes regarding unhappy childhoods.

[Charger]

Over To You has a intro riff that isn't half bad actually but it lacks punch and once the verse kicks in the song takes a fast turn to worse.

Ozzy's vocals sound so strained and it's like he's half asleep singing. And the background keyboards are too high in the mix and very annoying. Horrible mixing.

Another song that sounds nothing like Black Sabbath...or good music for that matter.

[Zzzptm]

On its own, it's much better than being a slow/mellow song in between two fusion numbers. The grand piano runs lose me, but the stronger guitar tone around 3:45 brings me back for about 5 seconds of riffy fun. But the verses... turgid things, those verses. It's a very laborious song. With the fade out, it's just monotonous.

[Typhon]

Being my favorite song on the album, Over To You is a hidden gem. Love the rhythm throughout the tune as well as the use of the piano sounding keys.  With great lyrics describing how society can rule your life, this song winds up in the later half of my Top 10 best Sabbath songs.  Terrific track.   

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

Next we come to the jazzy instrumental Break Out. Aparently concieved to have a vocal track that Ozzy refused to participate on, I wonder if the horn section was added afterwards to fill out the sound? Anyway, it's not actually dreadful, they've done worse instrumentals (and even full songs), but it's a little throw away and does nothing for the album.

[Charger]

Break Out is an absolutely horrid number. The stupid horns and ridiculous jazz fusion garbage is just too much to handle.

Hands down one of the worst tracks Sabbath has ever done.

I think Ozzy put it quite well:

Fuck this, I'm off ... The bottom line was that 'Breakout' was stretching it too far for me. With tracks like that on the album, we might as well have been called Slack Haddock, not Black Sabbath

And yeah...this album is far more Slack Haddock than it could ever be Black Sabbath.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

The album closes with Swinging the Chain. Sung by Bill, it's not a dreadful song, and infact I quite enjoy it if I'm in the mood. It would be interesting to know how it would have sounded with Ozzy on vocals, but I guess he'd given up by this point.

It has a lot of harmonica on it instead of a solo from Tony. There are some iffy lyrics, but it's far from the worst song they ever made.

[Charger]

Swining The Chain is yet another dreadful song. Horrid even one might say.

This was a track they wrote with Dave Walker and Ozzy refused to sing it...for obvious reasons I would imagine...one of them ofcourse being that the song is horrible.

If Am I Going Insane is the worst song Ozzy ever sang for Sabbath, this would be the worst song anyone else sang for Sabbath.

[Typhon]

Because Break Out wound up as the Lead-In to Swinging The Chain, I chose to review them together.  I'm fine with this LI and it smoothly transitions into the closer.  It's an okay song and Bill surprised me a bit with the strength of his singing voice.  Once again, the use of so many unexpected instruments applied to hard rock music, is quite imaginative.

Sometimes, as this final tune fades out, I stop and have a moment of bitter-sweet reflection, thinking "Well, that is it.  The era is over.  The end of the greatest stretch of rock music there ever was, or ever will be."  I'm so thankful that I was lucky enough to be able to have lived with it.
 

[Zzzptm]

Break Out - The Tony Iommi Jazz Trio goes it alone, does not deliver. It's time for a retooling.

Swinging the Chain - Another jazzy number, less so that the previous track, but it's still got a jazzy hook to it. I like the first part, but the second just crashes on the rocks.

Overall, I think there's a good album to be had in picking out the best of TE and NSD!, but on their own, they show a band that burned out after the stress that produced the epic Sabotage.

What comes next on Heaven and Hell is totally different in terms of sound, lyrical direction, production, everything - but it's also much more alive and energetic than the two albums preceding it. For Ozzy, it's his first two epic solo albums that are about to come out. So TE and NSD! are not cases of a band that's past its prime. It's a band that's in need of a break from itself.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

The listing goes something like this:

1= Juniors Eyes
1= Air Dance
3. Over To You
4. Johnny Blade
5. Shock Wave
6. A Hard Road

7. Swinging The Chain
8. Never Say Die
9. Break Out


Next time do we want to do '13' to complete te Ozzy Albums or go on to Heaven and Hell?

[Zzzptm]

I'm up for a Dio run, but I'll let one of y'all start the next song by song thread. Surprise me.