Away Team

Following the departure of lead singer Ronnie James Dio and drummer Vinnie Appice after the studio mixing of the Live Evil album, Black Sabbath were once again on the lookout for yet another lead vocalist to fill the significant void left at stage front. The band turned to ex-Deep Purple lead singer Ian Gillan.

The resultant album and live touring certainly made for one of the more curious associations in the world of heavy metal. Much of this era of Black Sabbath has passed into rock folklore and was actually the source for much of the material used in the rockumentary movie, This Is Spinal Tap. From the replica stage production of Stonehenge which was too large for some of the venues on the world tour to the employment of a dwarf to dress-up and play the part of the ‘devil-baby‘ from the LP front cover, the world of Black Sabbath took-on a distinct air of the surreal.

Whilst the well received Born Again album and live dates succeeded in stoking the embers and kept the Sabbath flames burning, this would ultimately be a marriage built more on friendship and respect as opposed to any long-standing and compatible musical association. After one tour, Ian Gillan would eventually bid farewell and re-join his old sparring partners for the Mk. II reunion of Deep Purple and leave Black Sabbath once more gazing into the crystal ball hoping the face of yet another lead vocalist would reveal itself.

For Iommi, Butler, Ward, Gillan, and keyboardist Geoff Nicholls, work would swiftly commence in May of ’83 at the Manor Studios in the village of Shiptonon-Cherwell, Oxfordshire. Produced by Black Sabbath and co-producer Robin Black, who had also worked on 1975′s Sabotage, 1976′s Technical Ecstasy, and 1978′s Never Say Die, Sabbath‘s eleventh studio release would represent a radical departure from the gloomy atmospherics and blackened lyricism that had forged their identity and spawned innumerable descendants.

Gillan‘s approach to song-writing bespoke a lighter-hearted approach to what had, until then, been the primary concern of Butler. Album-opener Trashed, for instance, was inspired by Gillan‘s boozed-up race around the Manor’s grounds in Bill Ward‘s car that ended in near-catastrophe and a wrecked vehicle. Disturbing The Priest was the result of a door in the studio having been left open during playback, and a local vicar appearing in the doorway asking for the volume to be turned down as it was disturbing choir practice in the adjacent village.

For all of its off-kilter appearance however, Born Again was still Sabbath through and through. Musically twisted and possessed with more than a whiff of brimstone, the album is a thrilling glimpse into an alternative world.

For this re-mastered Deluxe Expanded Edition, a second disc containing two bonus tracks is included, with ‘The Fallen‘ being a previously unreleased studio outtake recorded during the original album session. Also included are nine tracks from the BBC Friday Rock Show broadcast of Black Sabbath‘s appearance at the Reading Rock Festival in August 1983, which also includes a performance of Deep Purple‘s classic ‘Smoke On The Water‘.

The Born Again Deluxe Expanded Edition tracklisting is as follows:
Disc 1 (original album):
Trashed
Stonehenge
Disturbing The Priest
The Dark
Zero The Hero
Digital Bitch
Hot Line
Keep It Warm

Disc 2:
The Fallen (Previously Unreleased Album Session Outtake)
Stonehenge (Extended Version)



Live at the Reading Festival, Saturday August 27 1983
(BBC Friday Rock Show broadcast):
Hot Line
War Pigs (live)
Black Sabbath (live)
The Dark
Zero The Hero
Digital Bitch
Iron Man (live)
Smoke On The Water (live)
Paranoid (live)

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