Oh no! It's Halloween, and I don't have a relative album to post! And, to make matters worse, I've missed too many Friday the 13th's too. So I decided to cheat and repost an older review. You may think I've run out of "horror rock" albums to present, but that is absolutely not the case! I just don't want to do any of the obvious ones - not yet! I still have a few centuries for that - and I will need centuries to finish presenting my record collection at this pace. All I need is a vampire to come and bite me, and then I've got it made: listen to my records and CD's all day long (no wasting daytime sleeping in coffins for me, thank you), write in my blog, and roam the streets of Delft at night hunting juicy TU students for their blood. Next morning there'll be another bloodless body floating in the canal - call Van Helsing to the rescue! I'm not kidding, professor Van Helsing lives right down the street and teaches at TU Delft! And if you think Delft is no place for vampires, you obviously haven't watched Werner Herzog's Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht. Most of the town scenes were filmed here - boy do I know some crazy stories about the filming of that movie, that guy Herzog was a first-class loon, just like his protagonist Klaus Kinski. But I'm not going into them today - no, I want to write instead about the DVD playing on my home cinema right now.
It's called Black Sabbath The End, and it documents the last concert of the last tour ever by that happy-go-lucky boy band, Black Sabbath. The boys have been through a lot these past years: when I last saw them in concert almost a decade ago, guitarist Tony Iommi was battling cancer but he looked healthier than Ozzy who looked and sounded like one of the zombies from Walking Dead. In this DVD, though, he just sounds like an older version of himself, and seems in good shape: a bit like an artificially re-animated corpse who has recently been taken care of by a master undertaker. Iommi and Geezer Butler ooze class, and drummer Bill Ward looks thirty years younger - scratch that, he has been replaced by Tommy Clufetos. Maybe Ward had an embalming fluid accident, it wouldn't be the first time a musician's reanimation goes bad - if you've seen the cult movie Dracula Of Exarchia you know what I mean. Adam Wakeman (son of Rick, who also played with Sabbath in the 70's) has the unenviable task of playing keyboards at a Sabbath show. Of course pitted against the heaviest guitar in the universe he stands as much chance as Tiny Tim in a boxing match against Mike Tyson. The concert in this DVD took place on February 4th, 2017 at the band's home town of Birmingham. It is augmented by "The Angelic Sessions" a few tracks recorded live-in-studio a few days later. I thought I was getting both the concert and bonus tracks on CD plus the DVD but no - you can get either the audio CD or the DVD plus a CD with The Angelic Sessions. If you want everything, you'll have to spend a small fortune for the super deluxe edition.
If you have to choose, go for the DVD. It's well-filmed, and the 5.1. surround sound is fantastic. The editing gives the movie a fast pace, many different angles are used, and the picture is given an atmospheric tint. Every instrument sounds crisp and clear, allowing you to admire the mastery of the musicians, especially Butler whose bass was previously all-too-often buried in the mix. Iommi is, of course, the riffmaster but he lays down a few nimble solos too. Clufetos also takes the spotlight for a long and powerful solo, and Ozzy sounds pretty good. Except when he talks, I can hardly make out anything he says. How the hell did he end up with his own TV show? What do they do - dub him or use subtitles? The concert starts with the perfect Halloween tune: the eponymous song "Black Sabbath", slow and heavy with menacing lyrics like "What is this that stands before me? Figure in black which points at me...Satan's sitting there, he's smiling/ Watches those flames get higher and higher". Well, what did you expect from a band named after a horror movie with Boris Karloff? Lucifer appears frequently in the lyrics, together with a homicidal Iron Man, bloodthirsty generals, fairies with boots who dance with dwarves, Death as the Grim Reaper, paranoid men, dirty women and the children of the grave. References to marijuana and cocaine also abound. The songlist relies heavily on the first four albums, while the Angelic Sessions CD finds some room for 5 classics left out of the concert: On "The Wizard" we get a rare chance to hear Ozzy blow some blues harp, "Wicked World" sports some pretty wicked guitar, and "Sweet Leaf" is a solid run through an old favourite. I found the performance on "Tomorrow's Dream" a bit sloppy, but the emotive piano and vocals on the closing ballad "Changes" made for a fittingly emotional coda to the career of this iconic band.
It's called Black Sabbath The End, and it documents the last concert of the last tour ever by that happy-go-lucky boy band, Black Sabbath. The boys have been through a lot these past years: when I last saw them in concert almost a decade ago, guitarist Tony Iommi was battling cancer but he looked healthier than Ozzy who looked and sounded like one of the zombies from Walking Dead. In this DVD, though, he just sounds like an older version of himself, and seems in good shape: a bit like an artificially re-animated corpse who has recently been taken care of by a master undertaker. Iommi and Geezer Butler ooze class, and drummer Bill Ward looks thirty years younger - scratch that, he has been replaced by Tommy Clufetos. Maybe Ward had an embalming fluid accident, it wouldn't be the first time a musician's reanimation goes bad - if you've seen the cult movie Dracula Of Exarchia you know what I mean. Adam Wakeman (son of Rick, who also played with Sabbath in the 70's) has the unenviable task of playing keyboards at a Sabbath show. Of course pitted against the heaviest guitar in the universe he stands as much chance as Tiny Tim in a boxing match against Mike Tyson. The concert in this DVD took place on February 4th, 2017 at the band's home town of Birmingham. It is augmented by "The Angelic Sessions" a few tracks recorded live-in-studio a few days later. I thought I was getting both the concert and bonus tracks on CD plus the DVD but no - you can get either the audio CD or the DVD plus a CD with The Angelic Sessions. If you want everything, you'll have to spend a small fortune for the super deluxe edition.
If you have to choose, go for the DVD. It's well-filmed, and the 5.1. surround sound is fantastic. The editing gives the movie a fast pace, many different angles are used, and the picture is given an atmospheric tint. Every instrument sounds crisp and clear, allowing you to admire the mastery of the musicians, especially Butler whose bass was previously all-too-often buried in the mix. Iommi is, of course, the riffmaster but he lays down a few nimble solos too. Clufetos also takes the spotlight for a long and powerful solo, and Ozzy sounds pretty good. Except when he talks, I can hardly make out anything he says. How the hell did he end up with his own TV show? What do they do - dub him or use subtitles? The concert starts with the perfect Halloween tune: the eponymous song "Black Sabbath", slow and heavy with menacing lyrics like "What is this that stands before me? Figure in black which points at me...Satan's sitting there, he's smiling/ Watches those flames get higher and higher". Well, what did you expect from a band named after a horror movie with Boris Karloff? Lucifer appears frequently in the lyrics, together with a homicidal Iron Man, bloodthirsty generals, fairies with boots who dance with dwarves, Death as the Grim Reaper, paranoid men, dirty women and the children of the grave. References to marijuana and cocaine also abound. The songlist relies heavily on the first four albums, while the Angelic Sessions CD finds some room for 5 classics left out of the concert: On "The Wizard" we get a rare chance to hear Ozzy blow some blues harp, "Wicked World" sports some pretty wicked guitar, and "Sweet Leaf" is a solid run through an old favourite. I found the performance on "Tomorrow's Dream" a bit sloppy, but the emotive piano and vocals on the closing ballad "Changes" made for a fittingly emotional coda to the career of this iconic band.
DVD (*** to ****) Black Sabbath, Fairies Wear Boots, Under The Sun / Every Day Comes And Goes, After Forever, Into The Void, Snowblind, War Pigs, Behind The Wall Of Sleep, Bassically/ N.I.B., Hand Of Doom, Medley:Supernaut/Sabbath Bloody Sabbath/Megalomania, Rat Salad/Drum Solo, Iron Man, Dirty Women, Children Of The Grave, Paranoid
CD **** for The Wizard, Changes *** for Wicked World, Sweet Leaf ** for Tomorrow's Dream
CD **** for The Wizard, Changes *** for Wicked World, Sweet Leaf ** for Tomorrow's Dream
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