Born Again - Song By Song

[Zzzptm]

Hey! This is Born Again! Seventh Star stuff should go to another thread!

Stonehenge: Music to plan stage prop designs to.

Disturbing the Priest: After the first chord stab and screams, I remember hearing "Scarabus" from the Ian Gillan Band album by the same name and thinking, "huh. That's an odd choice for the foundation of a Sabbath tune." Then again, the Tony Iommi Jazz Trio might have been partial to the fusion rock from the IGB. I've never warmed to the tune, but never hated it, either. It's what I listen to between Trashed and Zero the Hero.

[Zzzptm]

Why can’t it be discussed here

Hello, welcome to the Born Again thread.

[Charger]

Quite right.

Back on topic.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

I moved (most of) my post to the new Seventh Star thread.

[Jack the Stripper]

Stonehenge is a kind of cool sounding piece but it seems misplaced as a stand alone instrumental 2nd song in. It does flow ok into the next track but I don’t really see any reason for having it as a seperate track or even having it at all. The title is cheesy as was the silly stage prop they toured with on the accompanying tour which provided much inspiration for Spinal Tap.

Disturbing the Priest is the best song on the album for mine. It’s quite unique in its structure and delivery but still has a Sabbath familiarity to it with the way it builds tension then releases it. Gillan really brings a lot atmosphere to this song with his vocals but unfortunately not the lyrics. Lines like “We’re disturbing the priest, Won’t you please come to our feast, Do we mind disturbing the priest, Not at all not at all not in the least” is embarrassingly bad. The whole album is littered with similarly bad lyrics. Love both Bills bombastic and subtle approach on this track as well as the seriously eerie sounds Tony gets out of his guitar.

Great song that could’ve been a real classic with a better mix and better lyrics.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

Side 1 ends with The Dark / Zero the Hero.

The Dark is a nice atmospheric peice but really doesn't need to be here and has nothing to do with the song it runs into...

Zero the Hero, is my favourite track on the album. Yes the lyrics are silly (as is te case with most of the album!). But it has a great riff and solo, Ian sings it well with NO screams (thank the lord!), it's laid back approach is a nice change of pace for the album.

[Charger]

The Dark is a perfect little intro. Very much like Embryo. Eventhough it's a seperate track you can't even imagine listening to Zero The Hero without it, just like you can't listen to Children Of The Grave without Embryo.

Zero The Hero is bit of an unusual Sabbath epic as it's a straight forward fast song. The main riff is catchy in it's simplicity. Guns & Roses ripped it for Paradice City too.

Ian belts out some killer vocals in his near shotgun style again which is brilliant. Eventhough he doesn't use his full range here it's still my second favourite vocal preformance by him on this album.

Eventhough I do not understand the hate of Ian's lyrics that is present here at all, I have to agree lyrically this isn't that good and bit on the odd side...But still it's not like there's bog blasts or silver ships on plasmic oceans here.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

^^^
I wouldn't say I hate the lyrics, and maybe "silly" wasn't the right word, but they are very different from the usual Sabbath lyric.

[Typhon]

The Dark is a fine mood setter, and a great LI to Zero The Hero.  I love the way that throbbing beat fades in as the LI fades out.  Without a doubt, the best song on the album, and it narrowly misses cracking my Top 10 Sabbath favorites.  Awesome tune.

[Jack the Stripper]

The Dark is another meaningless standalone instrumental track that tries to be all spooky but all it does is make them sound cartoonish(which Sabbath became even more later on) which they never were in the 70’s... It doesn’t even seem to flow well into the next song very well either which is...Zero the Hero I’ve never really dug this song much.The riff is ok but it’s just too goddam repetitive and the song doesn’t seem to go anywhere. The chorus is kinda catchy I guess but the rest of the song sounds pedestrian. And again, then you get to the laughable lyrics. “Your face is normal that’s the way you’re bred, And that’s the way you’re going to stay.” “Where the heroes sit by the river, With a magic in their music as they eat raw liver”

And then finishes with this doozy“But the luv-a-duckin' way you're walkin' around. The city with your balls and your head full of nothing. It's easy for you sucker but you really need stuffing”

At some stage Tony probably should’ve pulled rank and demand Geezer write the lyrics 

[Zzzptm]

Zero the Hero has a great brooding sound in it, a very doomy rumble. WHY they all thought it would be good to have Ian Gillan make a stab at rapping, I don't know. On the whole, I enjoy the song if I take the lyrics more as additional, ambient percussion than as something with a deeper meaning.

But, Jack, if you want worse lyrics, flip the record over for the first track of side 2...

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

The first track on side 2 is Digital Bitch.

Ow! my ears.

Awful, awful song... it's right down at the bottom of the barrel with Changes and Am I Going Insane as the worst songs they ever did.

[Charger]

Digital Bitch is a nice fast rocker which pokes quite clearly towards the biggest bitch in the whole wide world (no not Kyle's mom) Sharon Osbourne.

It's not a great song but it most certainly isn't a bad one either. The riff isn't among Tony's finest fast song riffs.

[Zzzptm]

It's fast, but oh so sour. That guitar tone, the horrible lyrics, it's as bad as the album cover. I think better production could save the underlying instrumental track, but the lyrics need a complete and total rewrite.

[Jack the Stripper]

The lyrics just go from bad to worse on this album. The riff is as bland and as uninspired as Tony had come up with to this point and the chorus is by far the worst on the album and one of the worst that’s ever been on a Sabbath album ever. Digital Bitch shouldn’t have made the cut on this album or any album for that matter. Just embarrassingly bad.