After the unmitigated mess that was Sabotage, then came Technical Ecstasy. What can honestly be said about this album? It's Black Sabbath...but rock. It is considered the worst Black Sabbath album of the original line-up, but is that true?

Who is to blame for this? Black Sabbath never changed their song when critics Trashed their first four albums, why would they change now? Specifically, since, at the time, Tony Iommi was in complete control of Black Sabbath, why did Tony allow this to come to pass? What was his intention? Plain old musical progression, experimentation? Yes, but this is perhaps even too far.

I listened through this whole album, and only three songs really stuck out. The first one was "It's Alright." Sung by drummer Bill Ward, it sounds more like a Beatles song than any of Black Sabbath's ballads of old. It's not the pastoral "Sleeping Village", the stoner "Planet Caravan", the sorrowful "Solitude" or "Changes", or even the inquisitional Ozzy ballads "Who Are You?" or "Am I Going Insane?" It's a Beatles song, just...played by the band members of Black Sabbath, minus Ozzy Osbourne. This is about all we would miss of the 2012 line-up.

The next song that sticks out is extremely minimalistic. "She's Gone" is like a sorrowful classical opera, sung by Ozzy and with guitar pieces by Tony Iommi. It has the same sorrowful feeling of "Changes" and "Solitude", but it's just...not Black Sabbath. The only song on this album that actually has the feel of old Black Sabbath is the last track, featured in the video below. "Dirty Women" is as sexy as "Fairies Wear Boots" and "Sabbra Cadabra", with a doomy riff. After the guitar solo, there's a nice little power-chord passage, a la Deep Purple, that's sure to get heads banging, followed by progressive-sounding arpeggios worthy of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. If you waited long enough to get to the last track, or skipped your way, it was definitely worth it.

Even though this is the original line-up (even down to precious Bill Ward), this is not the same band that said "What is this that stands before me?" Why does it deserve such a high-rating? Well, as AC/DC, Queen and Beatles-esque as this album was, it was at least half-way decent, especially compared to Never Say Die. One thing it definitely had over it's predecessor, Sabotage, is that all the albums have a musical theme, whereas the songs in Sabotage were just an ungodly mess of musically unrelated pieces thrown together to make an album. I honestly believe that, were it not for Heaven and Hell, this album and the one that followed, would have been the death of Black Sabbath.