• AllMyVinyl #39
• Band: Tony Iommi
• Album Title: The 1996 DEP Sessions
• Release Date: 28 Sep 2004 (US CD), 4 Oct 2024 (vinyl)
• Date purchased: N/A
• Location purchased: Comp from record label
• Color of vinyl: translucent black ice
• Number of discs: 1
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube ]

This album holds a special draw to me.  Very early in 2004, I was approached by Tony Iommi’s manager and was asked if I thought it would be something the fans would like if they released Eighth Star officially.  I said “Oh hell yes” of course.  That was the first time I had any contact with them.  While I’m no fool, I don’t think I caused it to happen, but the mere fact they asked me my opinion was a cool thing for me.  Like fans at the time, I knew the album as “Eighth Star”, so I was quite familiar with the music.   The album came out on 28 Sep 2004 in North America, and on 4 Oct in the UK/Europe.  It only came out on CD 20 years ago.  It was never printed on vinyl until now.  So because of my connections with my Sabbath site, BMG sent me a copy of the re-releases which came out 4 Oct 2024, amusingly 20 years to the day that the original album came out (in the UK).

I wrote this back in 2004 when the album first came out.. “So early in 2004 I find out that Tony has finally decided to dust off the old 8th Star material and properly clean it up and finally release it. This was a great moment for me, as I so much loved the material. In addition to that, there was one track that was not on the original bootleg version, so we’d get a “new” track as well. The songs on here are of a uniformly high quality. There isn’t one clunker here – it’s brilliant from start to end. If you have ever been a fan of Black Sabbath, you should like this. Glenn Hughes fans should also like this as well.”  Nothing’s changed. It’s still as damn good as it was in 2024 as it was in 2004. And 1996 as a bootleg.  As a reminder, the album was NOT remastered or remixed.  The CD & vinyl copies in 2024 are using the same mix from when it was released originally in 2004.

I got the vinyl in today (9 Oct, as it had to ship to me from the UK), and I immediately put DEP sessions on as the next album on the vinyl project.  The disc is officially labeled as “translucent black ice”, but to be honest, when it’s on my turntable, it looks standard black.  It is translucent, but I have to hold it up to a light source to see that.  I’ve included pictures of both of them below, but yeah, it really does look straight black on my turntable.

As for the tunes….

Gone – The lead song. Big ass riff, great vocals by Glenn, a statement song for the album, IMO. Great track. It also was the first one to be released “legally”. It first turned up on Glenn’s 2000 solo album “The Return of Crystal Karma” as “Gone”. I bought that album by Glenn solely because “Gone” is on it. :) The version on 8th Star has some keys that were removed from the final version. Always kind of missed those, but the final version is still a smoking track.

From Another World – The first sign this album won’t be a balls to the wall riffs to melt your face. And that’s good. It’s got a great bass sound to it which seems more noticeable due to the general tone of the song. Like Tony’s solo.

Don’t You Tell Me – When Tony released his first solo album in 2000 (Iommi), the main riff at the start go the song was purloined and used in the track “Black Oblivion” (from 2:48 onward there). When it came time to release this (legally) on Dep Sessions, it required a new riff be written, so here we are with the new riff. We get some of Glenn’s screaming here, but not up in the nuclear grade levels we’ve heard from him before. I also adore the ending of the track. The repeating riff that runs through the song morphs into an “ending” – not a fade out, but a hard cut that I feel works really well.

Don’t Drag the River – Another slower track which speaks to the blues origin of Black Sabbath – Glenn’s vocals work well here with the softer guitar sound by Tony. But then what doesn’t Glenn’s vocals work with? This was called “Real World” on the bootleg.

Fine – This song feels more like a Glenn Hughes track than an Iommi track. It of course has Iommi’s guitar on the whole thing, so of course it works. But the overall vibe of the song feels more like a Glenn track. The vocals seem to be more prominent here than the guitar.

Time is the Healer – Probably the heaviest fucking riff on the album. THIS sounds like what you’d expect from a song with Tony Iommi. I mean it sounds like it’s right off the Volume 4 album right next to St Vitus Dance & Under the Sun. This is kind of like the reverse of Fine, the guitar riff is out in front of Glenn’s vocals. Great track!

I’m Not the Same Man – One other thing that got changed when this album went legit was the track order. When this was a bootleg, this song was first (titled Not the Same), and it’s a remnant still in my head – I usually think “shouldn’t this be first and not 7th?” haha. But it is one of my fav kind of tracks – the 3-4 min long relatively fast track (think Neon Knights). Another track (like you need more evidence) of how well Iommi & Hughes work well together. This feels like a great marriage of guitar and vocals.

It Falls Through Me – Album closer. Another track which features Glenn more than the guitar, but the guitar riffs in here are of course excellent as well. It’s mostly slower, but I wouldn’t exactly call it a “slow” song. I do have to confess that I haven’t listened to DEP in awhile, so when I got to this song, I was like “Oh yeah, I remember this”, but most of the song was mostly forgotten to my old ass memory. Kind of cool to re-discover this track. Great closer. Was called “Through the Rain” on the bootleg.

As you probably know, this album was recorded in 1996 with a band lineup of Tony Iommi (gtr), Glenn Hughes (voc/bass), Dave Holland (drums), Don Airey (keys).  Inbetween this being recorded and being released officially, Dave Holland got into some legal trouble that I won’t get into here.  Due to that, Tony wanted to re-record the drums and did so.  He brought in Jimmy Copley to re-record the drums, and here’s a bit of what Jimmy had to say about doing that…

“I can’t tell you how great it is to work with Tony and Glenn. I was blown away with the power and energy they produce. Tony’s manager, Ralph, called me to say they needed to re-record the drums and as I was going off to Russia with M3 we only had a couple of days to do it. I went to Tony’s studio on a Wednesday and it went so well we finished the whole thing by lunchtime on Friday. Which was just as well as I left for Russia on Saturday. I used Cozy’s [Powell] old recording kit with a 26″ Kick, a really big warm sound, and my old 67 Ludwig Snare (the old faithful)! It’s great playing to completed tracks, hearing Glenn’s vocals/bass and Tony’s guitar coming back at you; you can’t help but be inspired. So we just went track after track, just me and Mike Exeter (engineer) and Tony would come in and say ‘Yeah’ or ‘Can you try this?’ or ‘Do you fancy a bit of pork pie?’ We had so much Stilton and pork pie that I called it the Pork Pie Project. All in all great music, great people. What more could you want? By the way, a special thanks to Mike Clement (Tony’s tech) and a true gent.”

To summarize, I loved this album because it showed some range for Tony – this album wasn’t just “Black Sabbath”.  I mean if you’re a Black Sabbath fan, you know what to expect when you listen to an album with that name.  I felt this album was a departure from that, and we got some songs you likely wouldn’t have gotten on a Black Sabbath album.  When I listened to this today I really enjoyed it.  There were some bits I had forgotten about, but re-discovered.  But overall the album is still the same banger it was 20 years ago.  If you never discovered it then, discover it now.  It’s got some awesome songs on it.