Last night, as part of my Christmas present from my wife, I got to see Black Sabbath finally. The band had announced their last tour, entitled obviously The End. Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Ozzy Osbourne all returned for the last go-around, but were accompanied by Tommy Clufetos on drums. Black Sabbath kicked off the tour in Omaha, NE of all places, because, and I am quoting Ozzy here "why the fuck not?"
I was not sure there was going to be an opening band until someone took the stage. That band was Rival Sons, a band I may have heard of at one point, but never really heard. Rival Sons was sort of a 60's/70's blues rock band. The singer was very impressive and they did have some damn catchy songs, but I was not really sure they belonged at this concert. I would have liked to have seen Black Sabbath bring on a young metal band to showcase, rather than this type of retro rock, personally. Nothing against the band as they were enjoyable enough.
A short while later, Black Sabbath took the stage and opened up with fittingly, "Black Sabbath". It was pretty clear from the beginning that Ozzy was not having the best night vocally, but that did not stop him from being the consummate showman, keeping the crowd going and interacting with them frequently. Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler on the other hand sounded terrific throughout. Iommi proved why he is one of the greatest and most influential guitarists out there and Geezer's trademarked rumbling bass sound was impressive.
The set list was mostly culled from the band's first four albums, much more of a sendoff than a tour focusing on newer material. In fact, only one song did not come from that era, "Dirty Women" and it was off of their seventh album Technical Ecstasy, which still featured the classic lineup. Other than that, the band played a bevy of favorites including "Behind the Wall of Sleep", "N.I.B.", "War Pigs", "Fairies Wear Boots", "Children of the Grave", "Into the Void", "Tomorrow's Dream", and "Snowblind". Of course "Iron Man" made an appearance and the band closed with "Paranoid", while purple confetti (the most metal of all party decorations) rained down from the rafters. One of the highlights was "Wicked World" which featured an extended drum solo, and Clufetos is one hell of a drummer.
I was a little disappointed the band did not play any material off of Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath as that is one of my favorite albums by Black Sabbath. As mentioned Ozzy sounded pretty bad throughout the concert, he was frequently out of tune and definitely did not have the ability to hit some of the higher notes. He was fairly active on stage though, despite kind of shuffling around like an octogenarian.
All in all, this was a damn good concert despite Ozzy's vocal limitations. I am very glad I got to see them before they hung it up for good.
Monday, January 25, 2016
Friday, January 1, 2016
Top However Many Albums of 2016
This is going to be kind of an ambitious post from someone who has barely posted in the last year and a half. Because of that, I feel like I need to cover all of the albums I have picked up over the last year. So there will be some less than good albums covered, don't take this to be a top albums list so much as ranking all of the albums I have bought over the year. This is going to be a long one. Even though I have not been picking up nearly as many albums this last year, there is still a pretty hefty stack sitting on my desk.
So, without further ado, abandon all hope ye who enter:
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