By rights two members of Black Sabbath shouldn't be on stage in Manchester on the grounds that they shouldn't still be alive. Guitarist Tony Iommi is being treated for lymphoma, which would lead lesser mortals to take an extended sickie at the very least while lead singer Ozzy Osbourne's drug and drink travails, well documented in the red tops and in wife Sharon's regular autobiographies, would have done for anyone without the constitution of a team of oxen.
But here they are, clad in black and grinning broadly, and along with bassist Geezer Butler and drafted in drummer Tommy Clufetos are firing up their amplifiers to 11 and turning the clock back to 1972.
From the opening siren of War Pigs through to the encore Paranoid (Ozzy rushing back on stage having hidden behind the speaker stack encouraging the audience to clap louder - 'come on you f*****s') the band that can be argued to have invented heavy metal grind out the riffs of classic song after classic song. Sabbath have rarely troubled the singles chart, but their repertoire draws heavily on their first four albums with three songs from this year's album chart topping '13' (Age of Reason, End of the Beginning and God is Dead) thrown in for good measure. The Sabbath sound has come full circle as the newer songs could easily have been written in the band's early days, so smoothly do they drop into the set. Anyone expecting Black Sabbath to start doing dub step or Miley Cyrus covers is going to be severely disappointed.
Several audience members appear to be paying their own personal tributes to an off the wagon Ozzy, and are significantly the worse for wear before the band come on. Ozzy, of course, has gone from being a shoeless petty thief from Aston, Birmingham to a national treasure singing at Buckingham Palace. You are unlikely to rush out and buy an Ozzy Osbourne keep fit DVD based on the physical shape he is in these days but there is no doubting the power of the voice or his enthusiasm at being on stage.
Geezer Butler, the band's main lyricist, performs a sterling job on bass and Clufetos plays an energetic stop start drum solo that, accompanied by a spectacular light show, builds the suspense before the band launch into the final stretch of the set.
The heart of the Black Sabbath engine though is Tony Iommi, in blue tinted specs and black leather, strolling up and down the side of the stage with a benign smile on his face and guitar in hand, effortlessly emitting arena shaking riffs without breaking sweat.
Heavy metal has its detractors but Black Sabbbath must be doing something right. The band are getting on but the audience, ranging from teenagers to late middle aged bikers, reflects a youthful demographic, demonstrating heavy metal's multi generational appeal and suggesting that as long as the band that invented it can keep going they'll continue to sell out big venues. Long live Sabbath!
No comments:
Post a Comment