By Scott McLennan
Globe Correspondent, June 11, 2013
Tolling bells and falling rain are the last things you hear on the
new Black Sabbath record, just as they are the first things you hear on
the band's 1970 debut. That’s not the only echo on “13,” the first
full-length Black Sabbath studio album since 1978 to feature singer Ozzy
Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi, and bassist Geezer Butler. The Rick
Rubin-produced reunion of the classic Sabbath lineup — minus drummer
Bill Ward, with Brad Wilk in his place — rekindles the tones and themes
of the band's first few albums. Iommi and Butler construct brooding,
monolithic riffs and Osbourne trains his funeral sing-talk vocals on
epic struggles between good and evil, God and Satan, and sanity and
madness. The generic gloom of “Loner” is the only flat spot among the
eight songs. And “13” ends strongly with the furious “Damaged Soul” and
damning “Dear Father,” the former a grim resignation and latter an
indictment of abusive priests and the churches that protected them (a
“War Pigs” for the clergy). (Out Tuesday)
Essential “Damaged Soul”
Black Sabbath plays Aug. 12 at the Comcast Center.
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