Black Sabbath
13

Still falls the rain.

So ominous was the thunder that the ancient storm rang its primordial funerary cadences once more.

There is no limit to the rediscovery of one's roots when the sprouts of their branches bloom from the seeds of full maturity. Indeed, the more symbolic the emergence of oneself is felt, the more spontaneous the need to regress becomes: returning to the dawn of one's expressiveness to reflect upon it is an irreversible law of nature when the creative process erupts carried by evasive wings.

Just as in many triggering factors of human experiences, John Michael “Ozzy” Osbourne, Terence Michael Joseph “Geezer” Butler, Anthony “Tony” Iommi, and Williams Thomas “Bill” Ward, immerse their creation “Black Sabbath” in the bubbling cauldron tangled by the frustrating obscurities of a bigoted and moralizing society.

Seeping like a hidden river, the desire for redemption towards an otherwise empty existence incubates within imaginative art forms: and so in the dull stupor of Birmingham, the interest of four young men towards alternative spirituality, occultism, uchronia, and religion dissolves the ephemeral hippie ambitions to become a volcano of exorcising sounds; in the ambitions of their soul, the desire of the proletarian spirit to detach from the daunting micro-history to aspire to the sky.

What follows are eight albums of which at least six are an expressive summation of leaden imaginaries, sepulchral elegies, deathly scenographies, and refuges of grotesque fantasies. Then, as in all tales, black, white, or pink, that magic becomes numb and the creature with an innovative inclination begins to stutter. Internal struggles, poorly concealed internal disputes, and insidious egomaniacal confrontations lead to the disbandment of the first Line Up. Others will follow, all different, where except for the eternal Iommi, names more (Dio, Gillan) or less (Hughes, Martin) known in the Metal scene will interchange, but somewhat like in the seventh reinterpretation of A Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven's New Nightmare), the original ghost of the protagonist never ceases to torment the actors who brought it to life.

That profound sense of rebellion, non-conformist culture, and desire for social redemption that had once bonded the four initiates, despite their (more or less) brilliant solo careers, flows back into their lives to induce them to come together again.

And so, after partial and sporadic reunions, 35 years after the last en plein, the decade-spanning desire for a restituito ad integrum materializes almost as everyone would have wanted. It is not, however, a reunion identical to the origins because the purism of the irreplaceable Bill Ward, overcoming nostalgia, allows the comparison with the past to be feasible “only” to 3/4 of the debut. The absence is no small matter because in that structural chart the weight of the Band was the weight of all four superimposed. Despite this, however, the orphaned reconstruction presents a substitute shadow member; Rick Rubin, a retrospective dowser who had already given luster to Metallica's reminiscent innovations.

The entire imaginary apparatus dotted with demonic superhuman spirals, daily anxieties, phantasmagoric allegories, and grotesque fantasies designed in 1970 is thus revived in eight tracks (or eleven, in the deluxe edition) most of which are covered by crypto-progressive physiognomies. And that the return was conceived in the shadow of the debut album's experiments and above all of Vol. 4 and Sabotage is stated by the lengthy opening duo: pachydermal epic infused with sharp tempo changes and caustic riffs tainted by abrasive voracity are ominously hurled within the apocalyptic dynamics of End of the Beginning. 40 years and more flare up timelessly in one of the heaviest riffs in the history of Rock; the recollection of the first cry invades the scene in a condensed manner, almost as to present a compendium without interruption to what has already happened. It is, however, only a faint and deceptive glimmer because the commemorative journey suddenly passes through Dirty Woman to then evolve and conclude in an independent manner. The conversation is then further confirmed and developed in the exasperated nihilism of the titanic God is Dead, this time, however, starting from a so occult yet blurred consilience with the “last” Eternal Idol and Kiss of Death. A litany drenched in sinister twilight unfolds into an extraordinary suite nearing 10 minutes; master puppeteer, one Iommi with an over-forty-year career, reflecting back on the early melodic progressions expressed in Wheel Of Confusion and Megalomania which are mirrored and re-elaborated within ultra-modern channels. Enigmatic interpretations even in the third track; within a more contained duration, the embryo of N.I.B. develops in Loner and in Ozzy's muffled voice adapts the replicating impulse.

The wonder of so much revival far from dwindling, increases exponentially exactly halfway through the record: the labyrinthine bewilderment scattered within remote galaxies and the diaphanous abductions under endless skies evoked by Planet Caravan are reborn in Zeitgeist. A sweet swoon of absolute self-reference repeats the poignant solitude of 43 years before; it emerges as a snapshot lost in the trunks of time and picked up for the purpose of re-immortalizing the landscape. Yet, it is not a portrait of mirrored expressiveness: as much as the clinical eye is trained to delve into memory, the descent into memories physiologically withers and when spells ad hoc attempt to revive it, the magic is no longer the same.

A different discourse for the 5th track, Age of reason, which by adapting the bearing axis of rocky phrases with complementary keyboard effects, almost unconsciously reminds us that between Never say Die and 13 there were also Headless Cross and Tyr.

Live forever and especially Damaged soul with granitic backdrops glide away dragged by that typically funereal and slowed Trademark that within genealogical threads suggests Hobbesian archetypes: the incommunicability of life, judging the different dishonestly, inspires its self-affirmative instincts.

In all this scenic implosion, how obvious the natural tendency towards circular self-destruction becomes, is especially revealed by the last component.

Indeed, it is a true compulsion to repeat the glaring apocalypse in the tail: Dear Father marks the total eclipse of an ancient star rekindled by the passage of a comet. A gray regrowth that rewinds a black tape written long ago.

Twilight chronicles reactivate youthful strengths and through implicit primordial lines overwrite ancient ambitions. For a moment, the convulsions of the thunderstorm from the beginning fall again. Within mournful chicanes, silent processions of imaginary umbrellas sing progressions open to the supernatural; dark echoes return, and the moist evaporate away in the deathly inception. Is it "The beginning of the end" or "The end of the beginning"? A too difficult intuition for the human enigma, the answer lives within the illusion:

"Reanimation of the sequence rewinds the future to the past. To find the source of the solution the system has to be recast…

…yet still, by the lake a young girl waits, unseeing she believes herself unseen, she smiles, faintly at the distant tolling bell, and the still falling rain..”.

Ad Maiora.