The best thing about this particular live recording is hearing Cozy Powell play with the band in the arena space; for his three albums with the band his time on the road with them was often fairly limited for various reasons. Hearing his super awesome interpretations of the fills on tracks like “War Pigs” is a real treat. Quality is pretty good here, although there is like a flutter effect that’s appeared on the tape, but what can you do. Considering it’s the Headless Cross tour the band don’t really bother all that much with songs from it, instead playing mainly Dio-era tunes and a few 70s cl ..read more

As someone who found 13 to be rather tedious in both production and actual song content, it will be of no surprise that I find this little EP of left over tracks to be equally as uninspired and devoid of anything of worth. On top of that you have some of the most dogshit art the band have used in some time. It’s a no from me, Tony mate ..read more

Wow, this get’s off to a shaky start! The drumming on “Black Sabbath” is so bad (not to mention Ozzy’s appalling singing) that I almost gave up before I started. I’m glad that I did stick with the whole record though, because I missed out on the Birmingham shows in person and felt like I had missed a momentous event in history. However, having consumed this entire live album several times, I don’t feel like I missed all that much. Many have commented on the heaviness here, especially of the low end and the percussion, and admittedly Geezer DOES sound incredible and the session drummer does pul ..read more

Ancient Dreams feels like both a sequel to Nightfall and a spiritual successor to Epicus Doomicus. The trouble is, and I mean no disrespect as this is still a highly enjoyable record, is that Ancient Dreams is not quite as good as either of the two previously mentioned albums. Nevertheless, let the phenomenal cover art draw you into a world of powerful, epic doom metal like only Candlemass can so expertly craft. If you enjoyed Nightfall but the reverb-drenched bombast was just a little too much for you, then try this instead. Highlights for me include “Mirror Mirror”, “A Cry From The Crypt” an ..read more

I’d originally written off Past Lives for being the “official” version of Live At Last but with a bunch of extra shit added onto the end. In some rather dim world views that is perhaps correct, but Past Lives is so much more than that, as I have recently found out. Yes, disc 1 is the same as the Live At Last album so if you’ve heard that, there’s no point in bothering with the first disc at all, really. The reward really comes with disc 2, which is a collection of live tracks that were previously only released in bootleg configurations. Whether those bootlegs have cooler art, release notes etc ..read more

It’s very cool to see the Tony Martin era music start to get some of the attention it deserves. I’ve probably been a bit harsh on some of the material myself. But I gotta say the remaster of both the title track of Headless Cross as well as “Anno Mundi” from Tyr sounds absolutely great. This single has definitely raised my excitement for the rereleases of all of these albums. I’m not going to buy them all again as I spent plenty of time and money hunting down the originals (more fool me), but I’m hoping these remasters bring a new generation of fans to this forgotten era of Black Sabbath ..read more

An interesting set of remixes, which is more than I expected. Perhaps unsurprisingly, drone is the buzzword of the day, and whilst like any remix album the quality varies track to track, the general overall level of quality is pretty high. Legacy Of Dissolution presents us with a shockingly pleasant set of reinterpreted textures – one that was quite uplifting, despite its heaviness, to listen to on a Sunday morning with a black coffee, watching the sun come up through the valley. The Justin Broadrick remix of “Harvey” sounds like some extra spacey Jesu outtake ..read more

Phase 3 has always been my least favourite of the early Earth releases. Moving away from the crushing drones of the earlier releases, Earth instead turned to shorter tracks of varying texture and feel. Whilst the band would refine this approach for the excellent Pentastar, Phase 3 is, frankly, a disjointed mess of ideas. Granted, a lot of these ideas are very pleasant and fun to listen to, but the album as a whole has a rushed, unfinished and “that’ll do” vibe to it. Is it bad? No. Does much better music come both immediately before and after it? Yes ..read more

Dopesick was the first Eyehategod album that I bought, although I didn’t really get into them until I heard Take As Needed For Pain. There was much more groove there – painstaking and agonizing groove but groove nonetheless – whereas Dopesick just seemed tortured to me; drawn out, unpleasant. I also found the production to be rather muddy, which is OK for drug-addled sludge, but the 2007 remaster rather refreshingly opens up Dopesick without losing any of its grime or disgusting sound ..read more

I love the mix of crushing doom metal and more traditional instrumental passages, which use all manner of different sounds to build the atmosphere. Anyone who puts a church organ on a doom record is a genius in my book. The production is also fantastic and the length of this thing, seemingly impenetrable at first, opens up the album like some sort of sprawling journey or concept album. Granted, this type of death/doom at the core here is not particularly original and may put some people off due to its limited sound palette, but for those into such things you can’t really go wrong with this alb ..read more