In the mid 70’s, a fairly new sound become all the rage, and Boston were at the forefront of it. So, when in doubt, just do what’s popular. People were going to Sabbath concerts only to see opening act Van Halen, and it was only a matter of time before the band got in their cars and headed home for good. After the disappointing and, in my opinion, complete waste of time known as 1976’s Technical Ecstasy, people were beginning to lose their interest in the band. Ozzy was a drugged buffoon that every other Sabbath member was long tired of, Tony Iommi was running out of song ideas, Bill Ward couldn’t stop getting injured, and Geezer was admittedly getting tired of writing lyrics. Miserably.īy the time the late 70’s had rolled around, Black Sabbath had run their course. If they'd carried making albums like this, however, well, it doesn't bear thinking about.Review Summary: Sabbath copies Boston.
Both parties made a return to heavy metal, and while there have been some shaky times for Sabbath they came out of still well-respected. Ozzy and the rest of the band would part ways here, and it proved to be one of their better decisions. Never Say Die really has nothing to sell itself to anyone except die-hard Sabbath fans, though I suppose there's always a perverse thrill from watching a once legendary band implode on record. Seriously, who ever let this man attempt falsetto screams should be publicly flogged. The song's really only of note due to the fact that drummer Bill Ward. Swinging The Chain is a dodgy Deep Purple rip-off, and possibly the most soggy, unremarkable closer. Although A Hard Road seems to elicit a “hey, this ain't so bad” from most people, I've always found it nauseatingly dull, with what feels like the same riff repeated over and over and over for a whole six minutes, although it feels longer than the fall of Rome. Shock Wave also starts out fairly promisingly, before heading into something so dull I couldn't tell you anything about it, despite having just listened to it as I'm writing this.Īnd, more alarmingly, we have genuinely inexcusable tripe that should never have been released to the public.
Air Dance is an interesting one, as although the first few minutes are quite charmingly weird, with the bizarre meandering piano lines and Tony Iommi pretending he's Carlos Santana over the whole thing, it all turns into some weird free improv thing that sounds like the song falling apart at the seems and ending before it can pull itself together. The shining example of this would be Junior's Eyes, featuring a stormer of a chorus, yet going on for about three minutes too long, and riding the same bass line pretty much all the way through. First we have promising songs let down by going on for too long and/or being far too repetitive. The rest of Never Say Die, then, falls into one of two categories. Breakout works too, but as it's a short instrumental it really contributes nothing to the album. The band have too many classic songs for me to really care to listen to it that much, but hey, you could stick it on a best-of and nobody would really complain. It's perhaps the only truly good song on Never Say Die, even if the opening riff sounds like a sped-up The Boys Are Back In Town. It's uncharacteristically fast-paced and cheery for Sabbath, and perhaps it works solely because it's unlike much of what's on display here.
Still, we get off to a solid start with the title track, possibly the only track on here that most fans actually like. Never Say Die all too often stumbles around tepid hard rock, with tediously overlong songs that seldom actually go anywhere. And where Sabbath Bloody Sabbath was a band digging deep during difficult times and getting results, Never Say Die is Black Sabbath as a spent creative force, using, as they did on Technical Ecstasy, bizarre experimental excursions that feel more like papering over the cracks than any real sign of progress (the intro to Johnny Blade sounds like something from bloody Sonic The Hedgehog). He'd returned for the recording of Never Say Die, but the band really are running on fumes. This incarnation of the band were as good as finished by 1978, with Ozzy having even briefly left the band a few months previously. It's fair to say that almost every legendary band ends not with a bang but a whimper, and this is certainly true for Ozzy-era Black Sabbath.