Black Sabbath
Live At Hammersmith Odeon

THE REVIEW

Alright guys. As you well know, Heavy Metal reached its highest peak with "Appetite for Destruction", but if one wants to reconstruct the history and origins of the genre, you cannot ignore starting with the founding fathers; there have been many, but if you really have to name an essential one, it can only be... Black Sabbath.

Black Sabbath practically invented heavy metal out of nothing.

Before them, there were the Beatles, very talented of course, but always too clean and perfect with all those gooey sugary songs. There were the Rolling Stones, but at the core, they were a country blues, honky tonk band, very talented of course, but they weren't really rock. The Who, in the beginning, were very rock, but then immediately with those things like Tommy, too brainy or too Broadway musical. There were the Pink Floyd, but at first, they were struggling, as you well know, they only started making truly surprising albums starting from Dark Side Of The Moon onwards. There was the legendary Jimi Hendrix, but he was basically a funky r'n'b guitarist lent to English psychedelia; I don't think he was metal. And then? Well, does anyone remember any other names?

In this context, Black Sabbath emerged as the real novelty, thanks to a massive guitar sound and all that ensues from it.

The guitarist Tony Iommi was the mind of the band, but also the arm, the hand, the fingers (not all of them in this case). To him, we basically owe the invention of the dark tones of much metal that came after. Sure, the rhythm section also had its weight with that distorted bass by Geezer Butler and the primitive pounding on the drums by Bill Ward.

And then there are Ozzy fans, those who say without Ozzy, no Black Sabbath.

Bullshit! Black Sabbath was Iommi.

Want proof? Then listen to this live recorded with Ronnie James Dio on vocals, and you'll see you'll be convinced.

Until the other day, I also thought Ronnie James Dio wasn't right for Black Sabbath and for metal in general, I was never convinced.

Then I got my hands on this CD, and it was a real surprise.

It was the "Mob Rules" tour, so Ward was also missing, replaced by one of the Appice brothers, don't ask me which one, but I think it wasn't the one from Vanilla Fudge, so it'll be the other one.

This concert is explosive, much better than "Live Evil", because it's more rough and angry, more raw, more real.

Pulled tight, the tracks follow one another without breaks, the performance is incendiary and Ronnie James Dio tore me to pieces with this live, he destroyed my convictions, forced me to reevaluate my whole life, converted me to a new religion. I now believe in Dio, and I feel I've found my path.

The setlist includes the best tracks from the two albums with Ronnie, plus some classics from the first three albums with Ozzy.

Released in 2005, initially only in a limited number of 5000 copies by order online, it was then added as a second CD in the deluxe edition of Mob Rules.

I say it's worth it. This CD strongly stands as a contender to become my favorite album of all time and, as you well know, I know quite a bit about music.