Born Again

The idea sure looked good on paper, but when former Deep Purple frontman Ian Gillian joined Black Sabbath for 1983's dreadful Born Again album, the grim reality was that Gillian's bluesy vocal style and oftentimes humorous lyrics were completely incompatible with the lords of doom and gloom. Widely deemed the band's creative nadir, Born Again's atrocious "production" leaves one with the distinct impression that, in a misguided attempt to record the heaviest album ever, Black Sabbath came away with the muddiest instead. Among the smoking ruins that pass for its songs, one might find it possible to appreciate Gillian's trademarked double entendres on "Disturbing the Priest," pick out a decent melody within the messy title track, and get down to some mercifully straightforward headbanging with "Digital Bitch" and the album's lone classic, "Trashed." Black Sabbath's greatly anticipated association with Ian Gillian had gone down as one of heavy metal's all-time greatest disappointments, and nearly killed the genre's founding fathers in the process.

Live Evil

Black Sabbath's first attempt at an official live album, 1982's Live Evil was also the straw that broke the camel's back -- or rather, split the legendary group's second lineup right down the middle. Band tensions were already at an all-time high leading into the album's mixing sessions, but when founding members Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler accused singer Ronnie James Dio of sneaking into the studio to raise the volume on his vocal tracks, the pint-sized warbler decided he'd had enough and, guilty or not, departed to pursue a solo career, taking drummer Vinnie Appice with him. Fateful accusations aside, Live Evil does benefit from a crystal clear, in-your-face sound, and by showcasing even amounts of both Ozzy and Dio material, effectively documents Black Sabbath's renascent tours of the early '80s. Dio certainly has the vocal chops, if not the same everyman charm, to handle the Osbourne classics, but his incessant banter between (and during!) songs sometimes verges on the unbearable.

Mob Rules

1981's Mob Rules was the second Black Sabbath album to feature vertically challenged singer , Ronnie James Dio whose powerful pipes and Dungeons and Dragons lyrics initially seemed like the perfect replacement for the recently departed and wildly popular Ozzy Osbourne. In fact, all the ingredients which had made their first outing, Heaven and Hell, so successful are re-utilized on this album, including legendary metal producer Martin Birch and supporting keyboard player Geoff Nichols. And while it lacks some of its predecessor's inspired songwriting, Mob Rules was given a much punchier, in-your-face mix by Birch. Over the next year, the shit would hit the fan for Black Sabbath, and Dio's exit would mark Mob Rules as the last widely respected studio release of the band's storied career.

Heaven and Hell

Many had left Black Sabbath for dead at the dawn of the '80s, and with good reason -- the band's last couple of albums albums were not even close to their early classics, and original singer Ozzy Osbourne had just split from the band. But Sabbath had found a worthy replacement in former Elf and Rainbow singer Ronnie James Dio, and bounced back to issue their finest album since the early '70s, 1980's Heaven and Hell. The band sounds reborn and re-energized throughout. Several tracks easily rank among Sabbath's all-time best, such as the vicious album opener, "Neon Knights," the moody, mid-paced epic "Children of the Sea," and the title track, which features one of Tony Iommi's best guitar riffs. With Heaven and Hell, Black Sabbath was obviously back in business. Unfortunately, the Dio-led version of the band would only record one more studio album before splitting up (although Dio would return briefly in the early '90s). One of Sabbath's finest records.

Greatest Hits

Black Sabbath's best-of discs continue to proliferate at alarming speed, and Castle's particular version is hopelessly outdated. The track listing is decent enough, but falls well short of a full CD's running time (it was assembled in the vinyl era) and is transferred straight from the master tapes, without any attention to mastering them for CD-quality sound. Hence, it's utterly avoidable. If you really only need to glimpse Sabbath, We Sold Our Soul for Rock'n'Roll is still the place to go.

Live at Last

Surprisingly, Warner Brothers never released a live Black Sabbath album in the U.S. during Ozzy Osbourne's years with the band. It wasn't until 1982's double-LP Live Evil (which featured Ronnie James instead of the Oz) that Warner finally put out a live Sabbath album in the U.S. Released in England in 1980, Live at Last is a single LP that was recorded before Osbourne's departure but didn't come out until after he had left. Unfortunately, this LP's liner notes are problematic. Nems lets you know that Live at Last was recorded in Manchester, England, and at the Rainbow in London, but no recording dates are given. And Osbourne's first name is misspelled "Ossie." As for the performances, the Osbourne/Geezer Butler/Tony Iommi/Bill Ward lineup of Sabbath is in decent form on such menacing favorites as "War Pigs," "Paranoid," "Sweet Leaf," and "Children of the Grave." Live at Last, which made it to American stores as an import, is by no means definitive -- how could it be without "Iron Man"? But even so, fans were glad to finally have a live recording of Osbourne-era Sabbath that wasn't a bootleg.

Never Say Die!

After going their separate ways for a brief period following the emotionally taxing and drug-infested Technical Ecstasy tour, Black Sabbath and singer Ozzy Osbourne reconciled long enough to record 1978's Never Say Die! -- an album whose varied but often unfocused songs perfectly reflected the band's uneasy state of affairs at the time. Even the surprisingly energetic title track, which seemed to kick things off with a promising bang, couldn't entirely mask the group's fading enthusiasm just beneath the surface after a few repeated listens. Never Say Die!'s incoherent musical aggregate in fact betrayed the harsh reality that it was indeed too late. So even though those same die-hard Sabbath fans and completists will likely find some redeeming value in Never Say Die! after all these years, the original lineup's final gasp will hold little interest to the average heavy metal fan.