Black Sabbath - Forbidden (1995)^{Release ID: 18}

There are a couple reasons people hate this, but they are equally pointless. First, yes, the production is a bit muddy, but it's really not bad. Come on people, have you only ever listened to crystal clear modern production jobs? The second reason, and this is the one I especially don't get, is the presence of Ice-T (and Ernie C). Yeah there's a "rap" part in the first track that lasts for a whopping 20 seconds or so. Really it sounds like any other spoken word part on a metal song, but since it has Ice-T's name attached to it, it gets metalheads raging about them "selling out" (at this point in their career no less) and "making a rap (metal) album", which couldn't be further from the truth.

In reality, this sounds pretty much like classic Sabbath, dark, heavy and for the most part slow and doomy. In fact I think of all the Martin-era albums (which I love btw) this is musically the closest to the classic sound of those first 6 albums. They really brought the darkness back here, maybe stronger than ever (Headless Cross is the one possible exception, in a very different way of course). I really think every Sabbath fan should give this one a chance without considering all the critique it's gotten for some reason. I believe you'd find at least half the album to be very good songs in their own right.

Top tracks: Can't Get Close Enough, Shaking Off the Chains, Rusty Angels, Forbidden, Kiss of Death (that really is half the album already)
Forgettable: well I guess Get a Grip is a bit of filler