Posts Tagged ‘black sabbath’
The Bill Ward Saga Goes On
This is an interesting comment from Sabbath’s camp:
“At the request of Bill Ward, through his attorney, so as to not give the public the wrong impression about his involvement in the current Black Sabbath lineup, we have temporarily removed Bill Ward’s images from the main pages of the blacksabbath.com official website. In accordance with Bill Ward’s attorney’s request, we are doing so for the duration of the forthcoming shows.” BLACK SABBATH
So Bill requested his removal from the photos? Just gonna take your toys and go home, Bill? Sheesh.
Dear Black Sabbath, Fuck Off!
Back Stabbath. Where’s Bill?
Revisionist history. Sabbath and Bill Ward don’t come to an agreement for the contract of the new tour and album and they clip him out of their photos at www.blacksabbath.com? That’s pretty shitty. The above photo was clipped from their gallery.
Serpent Throne
White Summer*Black Winter
I like a lot of instrumental bands but I’ve always found it difficult to find quality instrumental rock bands that didn’t write their stuff to sound like they were writing around having a singer. Philadelphia’s Serpent Throne satisfies my instrumental craving perfectly.
I met the two guitarists, Demian Fenton and Don Argott, at the premier for the movie Last Days Here during the SxSW 2011 Film and Music Festival. You can read my review of their movie here. They are the guys behind the production/direction of the movie and in talking with Demian after the flick, he mentioned that he was in a band and I had forgotten about it until a few days after seeing the movie as I was wrapped up in a lot of SxSW activities.
Since then I have been spinning their stuff practically non-stop. Metal has a lot of sub-genres and these guys would typically be classified in the stoner rock and doom categories. To call them Black Sabbath worship is too easy. Pretty much all metal bands worship Sabbath whether they know it or not. Serpent Throne take it to a bit of a different level in my opinion. They use lots great dual guitar harmonies that are reminiscent of Thin Lizzy in places. I hear hints of Trouble (S/T LP era) in there as well, intended or not. There are some cool hints of 70s Scorpions as well as Uriah Heep and Wishbone Ash. Maybe some Cactus too. It’s a nice blend of great rock and metal without sounding like they are just ripping off all of the classic bands.
I think it’s pretty tough for an instrumental band of this genre to continue to write stuff and keep it interesting and Serpent Throne has done that
The Battle of Old Crow
with all 3 of their albums: Ride Satan Ride (2007), The Battle of Old Crow (2009) and White Summer*Black Winter (2010). I highly recommend picking up all of their stuff. Battle of Old Crow and White Summer*Black Winter are available for download from Amazon and iTunes. I had to buy the CD for Ride Satan Ride and convert it to MP3 myself as it’s not available for legal download.
Hopefully I’ll catch these guys live sometime, even if it means heading to Philly for it. Would be cool to have them hit Austin for a show sometime. I think they’d do well here, especially if they were in on a SxSW gig. So, nice work, guys! Hope all good things come out of Last Days Here as well.
Black and Blue Concert Movie Review
Last night our local independent theater chain, The Alamo Drafthouse, played the 35mm version of the legendary Black and Blue concert from 
1980 which featured Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult live in Long Island, NY. I hadn’t seen this movie in about 20 years and had forgotten a lot about it. For some reason I thought that there were some interviews along with the concert footage, but I was sadly mistaken.
The movie starts out with some silly little movie by BOC called Here’s Johnny. Completely goofy. Then the live footage starts.
Let’s clear the air here. I’m no true BOC fan. They have a handful of songs that are friggin’ brilliant, but most everything else of theirs is hokey cheeseball stuff. I’ve tried time and time again to get into them and just can’t do it save those handful of songs that I really like. Their stage show was completely goofy. Sure, it was 1980, but c’mon. For the song Divine Wind, they dedicated it to the Ayatollah Khomeini and were flipping him the bird. Yes, I know that it was a big deal when all that was going on, I remember it well. And I guess that the news reflects in music quite often. Remember all the songs in the last 80s and early 90s about TV preachers and such? But still. Too goofy for me. Maybe had I been at the show I would not have thought the same. The only songs that BOC did in this set that I moderately liked were Cities On Flame and Godzilla (purely for nostalgic reasons). BOC’s stage presence is pretty boring as well. I met those guys about 7 years ago and they were a bunch of douches. It was at a biker rally in Virginia Beach, VA and they were doing a little meet and greet before their set. They treated every person there like shit. We stayed for 2 songs and left. Fuck ‘em. But that experience plays no hand in this review.
Now, on to better things. Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio. Ronnie always seems more animated when the cameras are running. When I saw DIO in 2002, he was lively but not cartoonish. When I was at Radio City Music Hall (NYC) in 2007 for the filming of the Heaven and Hell DVD, he was certainly more lively. Gotta play it up, eh? But in this movie, he’s over the top, more so than I have ever noticed in past live footage. Ronnie is very good with his between song banter. He throws the horns aplenty. He even says in one spot, “A lot of people mistake this sign for being something evil when it really just means long live rock and roll.” They play a lot of the Ozzy era stuff and I never thought Dio sounded good on it. Just like Ozzy would sound terrible doing the Dio era stuff. They some Dio era stuff and it sounds pretty good. Tony and Geezer are killing it although Tony looks wasted. Geezer is playing an awesome BC Rich Eagle bass, unfortunately they don’t show him as much as I would like. It was interesting watching him use a pick in a few songs. Overall they sounded great but would have been a little greater had Bill Ward been behind the drums. When they did N.I.B., Dio made the comment that it doesn’t stand for Nativity In Black, it just stands for N.I.B.
The crowd in the theater was about half full, not too shabby for a 10:15PM showing on a Monday night. Tickets were $2 each. Our whole row seemed to know each other and that was fun. My friend and singer for local doom band Mala Suerte sat next to me. I cracked him up when I leaned over and said, “This is definitely a night for mustache rock!”
In the end, it was cool to see this on the big screen and to hang out with some good friends while doing…but I am tired today.
Here’s the setlist:
BOC
- Here’s Johnny
- The Marshall Plan
- Doctor Music
- Cities On Flame
- Divine Wind
- Godzilla
- Roadhouse Blues (The Doors)
- Born To Be Wild (Steppenwolf)
Black Sabbath
- Warpigs
- Neon Knights
- N.I.B.
- Iron Man
- Paranoid
- Heaven and Hell
- Die Young
This came out on VHS and Betamax in 1980 and a few years later on Laserdisc. It was supposedly being released on DVD in 2002 and for unknown reasons got canned. You can view the entire show on YouTube on this girl’s channel.
Holy Dio Tribute 2CD Set 1999
When I still had my CD business going, this was one of the things I plucked from Century Media and sold quite a few of. There were a ton of tribute albums coming out at the time and Century Media seemed to be releasing 
half of them. Some good, some not so good. This one was one of the better ones and has been out of print for quite some time now. Enjoy!
Tracks:
Disc 1
1. BLIND GUARDIAN – Don’t Talk To Strangers
2. PRIMAL FEAR – Kill The King
3. DORO – Egypt (The Chains Are On)
4. JAG PANZER – Children Of The Sea
5. FATES WARNING – Sign Of The Southern Cross
6. CATCH THE RAINBOW – Rainbow Eyes
7. GAMMA RAY – Long Live Rock And Roll
8. SWANO / TAGTGREN – Country Girl
Disc 2
1. GRAVE DIGGER – We Rock
2. HAMMERFALL – Man Of The Silver Mountain
3. HOLY MOTHER – Holy Diver
4. PRIMAL FEAR – Kill The King
5. AXEL RUDI PELL – Still I’m Sad
6. ENOLA GAY – Heaven And Hell
7. STEEL PROPHET – Neon Knight
8. SOLITUDE AETURNUS – Shame On The Night
9. DESTINY’S END – Last In Line
10. ANGEL DUST – Temple Of The King
Minus a few tracks like Destiny’s End, Grave Digger and maybe a few others, this is really good. I especially love Doro’s version of Egypt.
