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Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Black Sabbath-Heaven and Hell (1980)

At the end of the decade of the 70 Black Sabbath, I was already facing the abyss of self-destruction. The options were two, or take a long pause that allowed not only to regain strength but also to isolate themselves from that cycle composition-tour-composition-tour (with an exorbitant drug use in between), or to root the problem, amputate the member who had been a drag for several years, as was the singer Ozzy Osbourne. The failure of the two previous albums, ("Technical Ecstasy", 1976 and "Never Say Die!" 1978), a drug use that continued to rise and a series of problems Unresolved personnel in the past together constituted a borderline situation, a time bomb exploding. And with her in her hands, watching as the countdown progressed, Black Sabbath were not able to do anything, pressed not only by their record label but by themselves, imprisoned by their own conscience and by an inability that gripped them as a band.
The solution would be the fulminating, sad but without palliative expulsion of Ozzy, and the hiring of a new singer, Ronnie James Dio. With this, stability and creative fluency had been achieved, he had finally reached Black Sabbath, composing first 'Heaven and Hell' and then moving on to the rest of the songs that are part of the album, evoking the English band when composing was not an ordeal and recognizing that, despite having left a friend along the way, the change was necessary for the survival of the band.

This would be how the first Black Sabbath album without Ozzy Osbourne would move away from both the Doom Stoner practiced by Birmingham in their first 6 albums and the Glam, Hard Rock or the horrendous albums they made in the next two. The ninth album of Black Sabbath was going to be a pure Heavy Metal album, and a masterpiece responding to all the constants of the genre that they had created but that the young English bands of New Wave of British Heavy Metal helped them define the style that would dominate much of the eighties.

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