Black Sabbath's "Forbidden" album being remixed

In a recent interview with Midland Rocks, Tony Iommi had the following to say:

"I've had the time, on and off, to start to remix the 'Forbidden' album. I never liked the final mix and sound of it — none of the band did actually — so I've been working on that. I'm taking my time, and there is no rush with it. It will be done when it's done. But it's been good to go back and pull it all apart and start to put it back together again. We weren't involved with how it ended up sounding like it did. It was produced by Ernie C. from the band Body Count and he also got Ice-T to appear on it on the opening track 'Illusion Of Power' and they were from a totally different background to us. So he came in and did a good job at the time, but I just felt that, without changing any of the songs, there was an opportunity to go back and bring out some of the sounds and make it more what people would expect Sabbath to sound like. I met up with Tony Martin recently and I'm sure he will listen to what I have done with it at some point but at the moment it is just myself and engineer Mike Exeter who have been working on it. It was definitely that album that kind of irritated everybody. I was never happy with the guitar sound and Cozy was definitely never happy with the drum sound. He would go on and on about it. So I thought it would be nice to do it for him in a way." 

Tony Martin said this about "Forbidden" to Gibson.com in 2011:

"Well, 'Forbidden' is I want to say 'crap,' but it's actually not. The songs worked really well in rehearsals, and then things started to get political, and I got wind of an Ozzy Osbourn] reunion[with Sabbath — not from Sabbath directly, of course. But before that came, there was a meeting at the Sabbath offices in London to which we were summoned to discuss the possibility of doing a Run DMC type of album. I thought it wouldn't work and voiced that. Cozy Powell thought it wouldn't work. I was never sure that most of the others were convinced but we were kinda steered into a 'rap Sabbath' album. Then I was told that Ice-T was gonna be doing it and they couldn't or wouldn't tell me if he was doing the whole thing or just one track... and I still didn't know the answer to that when I was in the studio singing the tracks. They said they were gonna take it and see what Ice-T wanted to do. So it has a distinct ill feeling about it. The album eventually didn't really work although some fans love it. And it was the penultimate album to my being removed from the band; the last album to be released being 'Sabbath Stones', a compilation album, which kept my name in the band to span 10 years and six albums." 

This interests me because "Forbidden"is one of only a few Sabbath records that I don't have time for along with the ill-fated last couple of Ozzy-fronted records from the 70's, "Technical Ecstasy"& "Never Say Die!". So I'll be interested to see if this remix can give the record enough life to change my opinion.

So Body Count guitarist & 'Forbidden' producer Ernie C has responded on a recent episode of 'The Official Danko Jones Podcast':

"On Ice's first record, he sampled Sabbath's 'War Pigs'. And Tony Iommi got a whiff of it and he started listening to it and he said he liked it. And then he heard that I produced those first Body Count records that we did and he just gave us a call. And also, Miles Copeland helped out. Stewart Copeland's brother ran I.R.S Records. Miles helped get it together. Tony listened to the sample on there and then he started listening to our records and said 'I like that.' Miles came and said, 'I can get him to produce your next album].'… So we were in England and Tony came to our hotel. He said, 'I would like you to do our new record.' 

 Producing Sabbath was cool. It was a rock and roll experience that you can just say, 'Well, I did a Black Sabbath record, and I'm done. And it also made me say, 'Yeah, I really don't wanna produce bands that are already established'. It's good to produce young people that are listening. But when you're so set in your ways… I didn't feel any pressure trying to make a Sabbath album that would stand alongside the band's classic efforts. I really didn't pay that much attention to it. I was more of a Led Zeppelin fan. I loved Sabbath and this and that, but I wasn't a 'die-hard die-hard.' I wasn't intimidated… And the thing about that was that was the time when the vinyl was out, and I told them, 'I'm gonna dry the sound up a little bit.' Those records from the '80s were big sounding records. They sound like you're playing in a tunnel. So I told them, 'We're gonna dry it up a little bit.' 'Cause the vinyl was dry — that's what made the vinyl sound. It was so dry and in your face. It's not a big tunnel. That was the Van Halen stuff — the one guitar in the one ear. It's big and large, but if it had been dried up, I don't think it would have been that popular. There's something to that era that lends to you almost seeing 'em on a stage and you're back in the seats. And then when Nirvana came along, it made it more personal, like you're sitting down with someone… Nirvana made it more dried up and in your face, like we're gonna sit down and come to my garage and listen to my band."