OFF: Re: Heaven & Hell

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On 26 Aug 2009, at 11:09, Steve Swann wrote:
> They removed some of the H&H/Mob Rules material to make room for doing
> tunes from the new album.  Have to say, the newer material sounds a
> little drab to me, it's a bit meandering and doesn't have the driving,
> monster riffage that the classic Dio Sabbath (not even to mention Ozzy
> Sabbath) material had.  But happily for me they chose to keep keep
> Falling Off The Edge of the World, which is my personal favorite.
> (Although they did drop Sign of the Southern Cross - fortunately for
> me that was *after* I'd seen them perform it twice previously).



Saw 'em in Bogota, Colombia on this year's tour (along with former  
BOC-L member Andy Gilham, who was here at the time), and they were  
excellent -- even though I was sorry to not have "Sign of the  
Southern Cross" (which I _haven't_ seen live before, though the  
version on the DVD is cool).  I am forced to agree that the new H&H  
album does not reach the heights of the two early '80s albums (but  
are we surprised?), though for my part I think it compares well  
enough with Dehumanizer.  The songs tend towards a heavy doom grind,  
which is all very well, but there's little that's snappy to break up  
that pace a bit.  Still, there are some of the new tracks that stick  
in my rotation, particularly the "single" "Bible Black" and, perhaps  
even more so, "Follow the Tears" (mighty doom riff!).  It's a solid  
album, and worth definitely worth hearing -- though I have the  
sneaking suspicion that some of the better riffs that Iommi had been  
saving up over the years had already been deployed on his _Fused_  
album (with Glenn Hughes), which is considerably more varied in  
execution.  In an alternate universe, it would have been cool to see  
what the H&H lineup could have done with riffs like those Iommi kicks  
out on "Dopamine", "What You're Living For", "The Spell", or the  
sprawling "I Go Insane".

Needless to say, I think that anyone who likes Iommi's particular  
style of kicking out the jams could do worse than get a copy of  
_Fused_. I'm not really a fan of Glenn Hughes, but the album is  
basically good enough that Glenn's singing doesn't bother me. :)   
Drums are pounded by session veteran Kenny Aronoff who, suffice it to  
say, knows how to do the job quite well.

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
http://www.carlaz.com/