Reunion

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Band Name Black Sabbath
Album Name Reunion
Type Live
Data de lançamento 20 Outubro 1998
Estilo de MúsicaHeavy Metal
Membros têm este álbum355

Tracklist

DISC 1 - Recorded live at The N.E.C., Birmingham, England, 05/12/1997.
1.
 War Pigs
 08:27
2.
 Behind the Wall of Sleep
 04:06
3.
 N.I.B.
 06:44
4.
 Fairies Wear Boots
 06:18
5.
 Electric Funeral
 05:01
6.
 Sweet Leaf
 05:07
7.
 Spiral Architect
 05:40
8.
 Into the Void
 06:31
9.
 Snowblind
 06:07

Total playing time: 54:01



DISC 2
1.
 Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
 04:36
2.
 Orchid / Lord of This World
 07:07
3.
 Dirty Women
 06:29
4.
 Black Sabbath
 07:29
5.
 Iron Man
 08:21
6.
 Children of the Grave
 06:30
7.
 Paranoid
 04:28
8.
 Psycho Man (New Studio Track)
 05:18
9.
 Selling My Soul (New Studio Track)
 03:10

Total playing time: 53:28

Buy this album

 $37.04  10,90 €  8,48 €  £8.99  $42.88  8,48 €  37,34 €
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Black Sabbath



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Crítica @ vikingman369

23 Julho 2011

The one that started it all back again

Heaven and Hell, Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler, Bill Ward, Dio - ever since 1979, the band that started it all, an under-rated blues rock band from Aston United Kingdom that spawned the genre of heavy metal, became one or more of those great bands listed above. Eighteen years passed since Ozzy was kicked out, and a new generation of metal-fans arose, with nothing more of this great band than hearsay from the previous generation and a few good albums to re-re-play over and over.

This day, it changed. The booming bass of Geezer Butler, the pounding drums of Bill Ward, the riffs and shreds of Tony Iommi and the wailing voice of the Prince of Darkness have returned: Black Sabbath is officially reunited! Fewer things can stand up to the magnitude of the original line-up of Black Sabbath reunited, touring once again for the new generation of metal-heads.

In regards for the musicianship of the band, they're playing their hearts out as usual. Whether riffing, shredding or his melodic arpeggios, Tony Iommi's two fingers are doing their utmost best on the guitar. My major issue is that he doesn't dare go into D tuning with any of the songs. His "standard" tuning is E-flat, or in the case of songs from Master of Reality and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, C-sharp tuning. If you listen to Heaven and Hell's Live at Radio City, you'd see just how amazing his riffs sound in D tuning, and it would push this album from great to perfect - hearing the old Sabbath tunes in D (especially "Paranoid" and "Lord of this World" to name but a few).

Geezer is once again at his best, he's a credit to both finger-playing bass guitarists and vegans as well. Keep in mind that all of these "geezers" are, at the time, almost fifty. To be around for that long and still pull off all the stuff they did in their twenties is surely amazing - as amazing as Geezer's bass-slapping solo from the almighty classic "Mob Rules."

If anything, Bill Ward's drumming has gotten better over the years. Not to say that he wasn't good to begin with, but when you hear him now, he's a freaking beast. The sad thing is that, unlike his band-mate, he couldn't do drugs up the wazoo and get away with nothing more than slurred speech and Parkinson's syndrome. You'll see exactly what I mean later on.

As for Ozzy Osbourne, well, he's no longer singing from his nasaly head-voice, a la his (at that time) recent solo album Ozzmosis. That is definitely a good sign. As much of a through-and-through Ozzy fan I am, I have to admit that, after seeing his band mates (in a recent live bootleg) do backing vocals on one of his songs because he couldn't sing that fast, he's definitely on the down-side of his singing. Fortunately, that was not the case in 1997, and, though obviously a little thrashed (he can't hit the high-notes on "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath"), his singing is actually passable, considering that none of you believe he was really singing back in the 70s, just "shouting". Whatever!

The first five tracks are classic Sabbath hits, even "Fairies Wear Boots", the last track from the Paranoid album, and one of Sabbath's first songs about drugs, is just as beastly here as it was on the album - and that little lick Iommi plays at the very end (the one that faded out on the album version) is fucking addictive as hell!

The good thing about this live album is that you get two discs, and every song is a classic hit from the big five Black Sabbath albums (and even one, "Dirty Women", from the pariah Technical Ecstasy). Over half of Paranoid, three from the first album, including the titular track, the Lovecraft-inspired "Behind the Wall of Sleep" and the Satanic love-song named after Bill Ward's facial hair: "Mob Rules". The two good tracks from Master of Reality are doubled with the inclusion of their introductory "clean" songs, which make them just a little bit more epic: "Sweet Leaf" is a nice stoner track, but, predictably, its played so slow on this album, you'll be begging to hear Zakk Wylde's lightning-fast assault of pinch-harmonic abuse from Just Say Ozzy. As for the other two, thankfully they are played in the studio tuning (C-sharp), so it will be like hearing the band from the 70s again (except they won't be playing their other songs in C-sharp also, thankfully): see the below video for example.

I can't really pick and choose which tracks on Reunion are "good", because Black Sabbath chose to play only the good songs from their albums. So covering only the good tracks would be a track-by-track. With the exception of "Electric Funeral", Ozzy is doing what he does best on every other track: dropping the f-bomb in between verses as he tries to get the crowd going wild. That makes this album worth-while, hearing Ozzy in all of his Ozzy-ness with the gents from Black Sabbath playing the best songs.

But what's really cool about this album is the inclusion of two new studio tracks, courtesy of the boys from Sabbath (except for Bill Ward, whose back-problems caused a drum-machine to take his place on the second one). You won't find these anywhere else, which means that, if you get this CD, not only will you receive the whole live set, which is awesome, but two killer studio tracks from Black Sabbath. Predictably, they sound like the instrumentation from The Devil You Know with the vocals from Down to Earth: that's because that's exactly what it is, the musicians we love playing the music they love. Predictably, both of the tracks are about classic Black Sabbath song material: and the song titles, "Psycho Man" and "Selling My Soul" are pretty self-explanatory. Slow yet heavy riffs over Ozzy's moderately-tempered vocals, and even some clean guitar as well make these two somewhere between interesting and predictable.

The only bad thing I have against this album is that there is a generation of metal-heads who need Black Sabbath back among them and, like with Mob Rules, the band members are all pointing the fingers at each other for why they can't get back together. Oh well, maybe Tony Iommi will turn Who Cares? into Black Sabbath, or surprise us with a new line-up, featuring only him of the original line-up, and call it Black Sabbath as well. But we, the ones who loved Black Sabbath through good times and bad, need the one that started it all back again! So get off your damn high-horses, make up and get back together before another one of you dies!

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Crinn - 14 Julho 2012: Underrated? Are you kidding me? These guys have NEVER been underrated OR underground! As a primary witness and a person that bought their FIRST album when it came out, my FATHER said that these guys were all over the media and had a seemingly endless fanbase from the beginning!
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