Review by Sonny for Black Sabbath - Tyr (1990)

Black Sabbath, with Ozzy as frontman, birthed and popularised metal for so many of us old metalheads and Dio helped to resurrect the tottering giants from the terminal decline into which their drug-ravaged delusions had pitched them, delivering a couple of indisputable all-time metal classics in the process. So, come on people, revisionism can only go so far and to consider the Tony Martin era with anything like the same degree of respect as the Ozzy and Dio eras is disingenuous at best. But, that said, it is what it is and these albums still have the world's finest riff master plying his trade and no amount of awful 80s-style over-production can disguise that fact. On the odd occasion when I do listen to albums from this Sabbath era, I do my best to strip away the production in my mind, so I'm not hearing something akin to awful AOR shite like Journey or Foreigner, but getting down to the pure heart of the record and that is Iommi's impeccable ability to write riffs. To be fair, none of this is Tony Martin's fault and I have nothing against the guy per se and, in truth, he is a gifted singer who doesn't sound all that different to Dio as a quick listen to "The Law Maker" will attest - shut your eyes and it could be the diminutive one himself throwing horns left and right!

But, I will never believe that layered keyboards and harmonised backing vocals have any place on a Sabbath record and on a track like Jerusalem they are a bridge too far, especially when coupled with one of the weakest riffs Iommi has ever written, then it is a big ask for me to get too heavily behind it. The best tracks here are the ones that are recognisably continuations from previous band iterations, "The Sabbath Stones", "Anno Mundi" and "Valhalla" would all have sat comfortably on Heaven and Hell or Mob Rules, if not for the production equivalent of 1980's big hair and shoulder pads.

So, in summation, for me this is an album with a fistful of decent tracks, alongside a couple of duffers, dragged down by a production sound that, whilst beefing up the guitar tone, throws the drums way too much to the fore in a way that has become decidedly dated. Overuse of layered keyboards and harmonised backing vocals irritate me at the best of times, but on a Black Sabbath album this is totally indefensible to me. I can't hate this, because underneath it all the riffs reign supreme, but I will never love it either.