No minister or pastor or priest could warn their congregation about the dangers of evil as well as the first four Black Sabbath albums. With the original members getting together to make a new album and Tony Iommi battling cancer, and all this in the face of the nightmarish news that never seems to end, it's as though we are being given a chance to hear a new telling of an old warning that we never seem to heed, no matter when it has been given; that Evil exists.
It is no wonder that critics and end-term hippies were completely horrified by Black Sabbath. They were dark, ominous, luridly realistic like a psychotropic audio WeeGee. This wasn't the music you could get high to and come back from the ride with a neon tinged view of mankind or yourself. They spoke of lurking Evil, waiting for your moment of weakness. They pointed bloody fingers at the practitioners of evil arts who want to see the world burn. It was heavy.
Where are we now? More wars with no end in sight. The spectre of mushroom clouds and laughing lunatics who control them still hangs in the air. Starvation, hopelessness, cruelty...they never went away regardless of how well we ignored them. Add in the stench of global economic imbalance and the times are just as ripe for evil to find it's hosts as it was in the 60's and 70's.
I have no idea what Black Sabbath will do on this new album. The tone and mood of today seems fitting for another of their scare the hell out of you albums.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment