Not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. Sure, you can't expect Sabbath to top 'Heaven and Hell' the greatest Sabbath album of all time, but Born Again is still a great record.
Trashed, Disturbing The Priest, Zero The Hero, and Born Again rule hard.
For those who complain about the interludes 'Stonehenge' and 'The Dark,' those two are way better than the pointless 'Embryo', 100% filler 'FX', weaksauce 'Laguna Sunrise', and comical 'Breakout.'
Now there are 2 flaws with this record. One is the muddy production. It works on the title track and 'Zero The Hero', giving those songs a gloomy atmosphere, but ruins the rest of the album. Geezer is buried in the mix and Ward's hi-hat is too loud.
Iommi is to blame for not enough good riffs. Zero, Disturbing, and title track have memorable riffs, while the rest of the songs have good to generic riffing. Iommi's solos however, are excellent. Just listen to Trashed, Zero The Hero, Born Again, and Keep it Warm.
Ian Gillan is in no way at fault here. Okay... maybe his lyrics on 'Trashed' and 'Digital Bitch' could have been better, but his vocal performance fucking rules as usual. Hot Line and Disturbing The Priest have some of the best vocals since Deep Purple in Rock.
The last 2 tracks are far from metal and are definitely the weakest in terms of songwriting.
Shame this was the only album with Gillan. He got vocal chord surgery in '82 but was still excellent well into the late 1980s.
Highlights: Trashed, Disturbing The Priest, Zero The Hero, Born Again, and Hot Line for the vocal performance.
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