Black Sabbath – 13
Joe Siegler
- AllMyVinyl #3
- Band: Black Sabbath
- Album Title: 13
- Release Date: 7 Jun 2013 (Oz), 11 Jun (US/NA), 10 Jun (everywhere else)
- Date purchased: N/A
- Location purchased: Freebie from Record Label
- Color of vinyl: black
- Number of discs: 2
- Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | My Sabbath Website | Full album on Youtube ]
After many attempts over the decade – the original Black Sabbath got back together to make a new studio album in 2011 – except it didn’t stick – Bill Ward and “management” couldn’t agree on a contract, so we got a new studio album with Ozzy, but with a different drummer (Brad Wilk). To that, I wanted to state that I think that drummer change is the crux of the attacks on this album.
This should have been a rejoicing moment – but this album takes a LOT of shit from people, and I don’t get it. Oh sure, Bill Ward would have been preferred, Rick Rubin, loudness wars, blah, blah, blah. But I look at what’s in front of me. A studio album with Tony Iommi & Geezer Butler, along with Ozzy, and the intent on making it sound like a Black Sabbath album. In my opinion, it succeeds. There’s MULTIPLE tracks here that I really REALLY love which are great, so I’m in the camp of someone who really likes 13. Is it their best album? No, probably not, but I never understood the default behavior which is to slag this off.
The first single was “End of the Beginning”, which is a track I really like for a few reasons. It had some cross promotion, as Black Sabbath appeared in the Season 7 finale of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (amusingly that show’s 13th season). Anyway, while only Ozzy interacted with the cast via dialogue, the video clip was used, which I thought was a great move.
However, there’s a personal connection with this album for me. As some of you know I help out Geezer Butler with website and social media stuff. To that, we chat a bunch – about a number of things, but in particular, Doctor Who. When End of the Beginning came out, I heard some lyrics there which sounded positively Who-ish. Specifically..
“Regeneration of your Cyber sonic soul,
transformed in time and space beyond control.”
So I queried Geezer about that, and he told me he put those lyrics in there as a trap to see if I noticed them – given they’re definitely Doctor Who themed (he confirmed). That a Black Sabbath band member put something in the album specifically because of me was pretty cool to me. He told me that some of the lyrics from Zeitgeist are about Doctor Who as well.
But it’s more than that one song. Still, I loved the variance in the songs. Some great low end bass Sabbath sounds, some straight up old blues, even the last song ended with the thunder that was supposed to book end the start of the first album back in 1970. Overall, I really love End of the Beginning, Age of Reason, & Damaged Soul. The straight up blues jam during the second half of Damaged is smoking hot. Would have loved to have seen that live.
There’s 8 in all on the vinyl/base album release. There were four others spread out over various digital / CD formats. Then 5 more on the “The End” EP, so this COULD have been a proper double album, but was split up to be multiple projects. I mean it was a double vinyl, but only 8 songs, so just two per side. I’m just doing the vinyl for this series, so I’ll skip talking about the other tracks here, just wanted to mention ’em briefly.
In all, not a bad way to go out, although I do wish they could have found a way to do this with Bill Ward (or thought of a better album name than just “13”).
