Artist: Iommi
Label: Divine Recordings
Release Date: 10/17/00
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Title: Iommi Artist: Iommi Label: Divine Recordings Release Date: 10/17/00 |
Judgment Committee Reviews | Rating |
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3 | ||
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3 | ||
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3 | ||
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Abyss's Review:
It goes without saying that Tony Iommi has a lot to live up to. The fact is that no one who has any appreciation for heavy music can even feign complete impartiality when it comes to a figure with such stature as this man, the one who many believe invented heavy metal. Some feel that due to his remarkable resume he merits praise due to his longevity and sustained relevance. Yet others feel that his previous efforts remain untouchable, and everything that has come in their wake, even if of a high caliber, is relegated to second best. Two different points of view that are, more often than not, both right. And it is this contradiction within myself that makes this review so painstaking. My personal conflict over this album almost makes me wish this album had never been made, or at least that I'd never have had to review it.
"Mr. Iommi has crafted an album that has input from so many different sources, that his genius gets lost in the shuffle." If you're confused, let me try to explain my conundrum. If you were to ask me if this album is good, I would have to reply with a "yes". However, if you were to ask me if I were disappointed in this album, my answer would also be an affirmative. Mr. Iommi has crafted an album that has input from so many different sources, that his genius gets lost in the shuffle. In a sentence, this feels like less an album than a collection of songs. Rather than a group of guest stars conforming and paying homage to Mr. Iommi's brilliant doom, this album, as a whole, hits more like a cover album. The songs, more often than not, take the character of the guest stars rather than the material we would expect. And while a case can be made for an artist to branch out and remain relevant as times change, it can also show what can happen when an artist fails to stick to his respective strengths.
This all might sound a bit harsher than it's meant, as we always hurt the ones we love. The bottom line is that this album is good. The songs are well structured and written, and quite listenable. There are also instances that remind us how great a guitar player Mr. Iommi really is. He is obviously adaptable to some of the newer trends on the scene, hitting a low end "alternative" groove whilst playing with Billy Corgan, as well as his ability to fit in with the late nineties, metallized grunge that has been popularized as of late. The execution isn't deniable here; it's all-good as there is minimal filler on this disc. What I continually find myself questioning, however, is how much of this is really Mr. Iommi? Even with all of my love for the artist, I'm scared that he has less to do with the individual songs than he really should. Even when playing to what he knows, doom, I'm scared he's less the inspiration and more the inspired. Is the doom saturated track guested by Phil Anselmo more a reflection of old Sabbath, or the newer Down? Not that he should be faulted for this, any artist who doesn't continue to find inspiration in that which is around him will surely die creatively, but it does bring me back to my initial reaction, disappointment. I don't want to hear Tony Iommi's take on the current musical scene. I want to hear his magical guitar changing things up and inspiring me to new heights, as it did the first time I heard him. And I realize that might be too much to ask, and part of me thinks that I should just be happy that there is a Mr. Iommi at all, and that I still get the opportunity to listen to him. However, it's not enough to make me forget the conflict between the voices in the back of my head.
"The bottom line is that this album is good."
Death's Review:
I was psyched when I first heard about a new 2000 solo release from Tony Iommi. After reforming Black Sabbath and touring with the likes of Pantera and Slayer, perhaps Tony had finally realized that he is the King of the Riff, the Godfather of Heavy Metal. Maybe in the midst of all that touring the fans taught him to embrace the metal label, and showed him what it was about him that made him a legend. I sure did hope that was true. 'Cause nothing in the metal world was ever as disappointing to me as when Rob Halford told the Metal Update in an August 2000 interview that "even Tony refuses to call Sabbath a metal band. He absolutely refuses to. I just don't understand it." I don't understand it either, Rob. And I hoped that Iommi would remedy all of that.
"Iommi has gone the cheesy "Santana" route and written a bunch of disconnected songs which seem crafted to feature as many famous vocalists as possible." Does it? Well, kinda. While all of the songs are good in their own way, and a few are even great, none are what I wanted to hear from this record. Speaking of Rob Halford, his 2000 work serves as an excellent foil for Iommi's. Both are metal legends originating in the early half of the 1970's, both are now releasing what are essentially solo records, Iommi's entitled Iommi and Halford's entitled Resurrection. But that is where the comparisons must end. Halford put together a band and released a good, but not great, record. But Halford's record, unlike Iommi's, showcased The Voice, and sounded like himself. Unfortunately, this is where Iommi truly falls short.
Instead of putting together a band full of musicians to excute songs which feature Tony Iommi's guitar playing, Iommi has gone the cheesy "Santana" route and written a bunch of disconnected songs which seem crafted to feature as many famous vocalists as possible rather than to be an expression of Tony Iommi's playing and creative mind. This one has corporate project written all over it, at least to my ears. You can hear the pitch now: "we'll get Anselmo and Pete Steele and even the dude from Smashing Pumpkins!" It kind of makes me sick to see record execs so blatantly trading off the image of the guy who created the heavy metal riff yet seeming to totally misunderstand what he should sound like and not even seeming to care. And that colors my opinion of this record greatly.
You see, in 1986 Tony Iommi released an album under the moniker of "Black Sabbath featuring Tony Iommi" called Seventh Star. Now THAT, my friends, is a Tony Iommi solo record. Long, stoned, yet passionate guitar solos oozing with the trademark Iommi sound. Flourishes of inspired pentatonic notes, combined with songs that, while they were no Sabbath by any stretch of the imagination, were probably a truer representation of Tony Iommi's individual personality than Iommi ever will be. I mean c'mon folks: how can you have an Iommi solo record which is relatively short on guitar solos?? And sure, there is some doomy riffing (the song sung by Skin, entitled "Meat," is very, very good, including the vocal performance), but it is, for the most part, merely pedestrian and cannot possibly be the work of an artist of this calibur as much as a simple bed for different vocalists to do their thing.
"Tony, work a little harder on expressing your own creative vision and spend a little less time on the guest list." Yet I give this album a three. That is because the songs are all fairly cool, but mostly because of who is singing them. The best track is sung by Phil Anselmo ("Time is Mine"), and it is slow and heavy. But it honestly sounds more like Down than Tony Iommi. The Peter Steele-sung track has Type O sounding keyboards. I could go on and on but you get my point. I like some of the songs on here, and I want to support Tony Iommi. But I'm not falling for this metal version of the Santana-formula. Carlos Santana rocks, and is an important artist. He was making great music for years, and just because people now notice him because of the guest stars on his new record doesn't mean the guest stars are what make Santana great. So for the next album, Tony, work a little harder on expressing your own creative vision and spend a little less time on the guest list.
Hel's Review:
This album is exactly as the title says - it's the product of Tony Iommi, legendary Black Sabbath axeman. There are undoubtedly several things which flow from being a part of a band of this calibur. Foremost among them would appear be the ability to put out a solo album and get whomever you damn well please to sing on it. In fact, that seems to be the only rationale for his choice of vocal talent. With all-stars ranging from the assuredly metal (Phil Anselmo) to the relatively obscure (Serj Tankian) to the utterly tangential (Billy Corgan), it seems clear that the only real defining quality that they all have is that, well, I guess they've got good relationships with Tony.
"Every song that features a singer I previously did not like, I do not like, and the reverse is true." For a person like me, who has a reactionary approach to absorbing and appreciating music that is inexorably linked to the singer, the featured vocalist approach does not work very well. For example, no matter how much Tony shreds on "Patterns", because that guy from System of a Down's voice sounds like a goat dying, I just can't like the song. You can extrapolate on this theorem with great success. Every song that features a singer I previously did not like, I do not like, and the reverse is true. This certainly negates any possible unpredictable response based solely on the stimulus of the golden guitar of Toni Iommi, at least in my case.
If you're going to have a different singer on each and every track, you have to realize the majority of talk is going to focus on those vocalists. And indeed, during my first couple of listens, I found myself playing name that singer. Some were easy, like Ozzy (DUH!), Phil Anselmo, and Ian Astbury (to this day, I still can't hear this guy's voice and not think of that Cult hit from the 80s - sing with me, "Fiiiiirrrrrreeeee"...). Others were obvious only after reading the "spoilers", for me, these were Henry Rollins and Billy Idol. After a short period of time, I realized this was the most fascinating thing about the album. Beyond, perhaps, the personal question of why did he break up a perfectly good band (Drain sth) by stealing away the singer to be his wife and then not have her sing on the record? But that is neither here nor there...
My favorite, and therefore, the stand-out tracks on the album are "Meat", "Time Is Mine", "Just Say No To Love", and "Who's Fooling Who". Skin is fantastic on "Meat" and therefore this song may just be the highlight of the entire record for me. Biggest surprises on the record are Billy Idol's performance (I had forgotten he's not a bad singer, he just got trapped in his own cheese), and the fact that "Who's Fooling Who" doesn't sound quite as much like Black Sabbath as you might have expected.
"Which finally brings us to the music. On the whole, singer-shock aside, I found it rather uninteresting." Which finally brings us to the music. On the whole, singer-shock aside, I found it rather uninteresting. It's mostly of the "straightforward rock and roll" variety, which means it isn't particularly heavy or aggressive, for all of its doomy overtones. It's not elementally far from classic Sabbath, tries to be "hip" and "updated", but is ultimately just OK. The true value of the album ends up being in the interesting variety of guests spots - and you thought it was just hype! In the end, I find myself in a bizarre vicious circle: I want to knock a skull off for having to suffer through the worst of the singing, but the best makes me want to bring that back up a skull. I'm just going settle on 3 and call it a day.
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