Review Summary: Watered down mediocre hard rock and creative ambivalence pervade most of this album, but a few standouts show that Sabbath hasn't just quite crashed-and-burned...yet.
Around the time when Sabotage was released, Black Sabbath had started to outgrow its blues influences and doomy riffs in favor of a more hard rock sound. However, this change was anything but lackluster, and can be viewed as a favorable and natural evolution of their sound. Yet the band’s crippling drug problems, as well as frivolous antics in the studio (there are instances of Bill Ward being set on fire in pranks that were nearly fatal, multiple times) eventually caught up with them, creating an ambivalence that can be heard throughout almost all of Technical Ecstasy. This is without a doubt Sabbath’s first truly bad record, but it’s certainly not without it’s moments or redeeming factors. But overall, the band sounds (for the most part) uninspired and unfocused. Ozzy sounds totally atrocious and ruins several songs on this album. He was never that good on the first place, but he doesn't even sound like he's trying on here: just take his original nasality of his vocals and multiply and exaggerate it to the point it's unbearable. I personally interpret this whole record as an attempt to go more commercial gone completely awry ("Rock & Roll Doctor" is a blatant example of this).
The opener "Backstreet Kids" is a pretty throwaway track that while having a catchy riff, fails to deliver anything memorable except some lightning fast solos on the fretboard from Tony Iommi as always. That's one decent thing on this album: even on the worst and most painful tracks, there's always a great solo to save it from being entirely unlistenable.
"You Won't Change" is a highly synth driven piece that is definitely underrated and quite a standout. An eerie keyboard theme accompanied by slamming power chords explodes into a powerful and emotionally charged prog-rock song that wouldn't sound too out of place on a Pink Floyd or Genesis album.. Yet, and yet, Ozzy with his aforementioned vocal style is just incapable of delivering emotional and powerful lyrics effectively. The same thing applies to a similar song on this album, the finely composed "She's Gone" which would have been a masterpiece if it weren't for Ozzy's terrible singing.
Following song is "It's Alright" a piano ballad which is unique for having Bill Ward on vocals, which I don't really mind to be honest. By just the third track you're begging to hear anyone but Ozzy anyway. It's a good ballad and I actually heard it for years without knowing it was Black Sabbath.
Now since I'm a lover of all kinds of music and being able to appreciate basically anything, I don't like to just haphazardly label tracks as "filler". But the only word that can describe this next chunk of the album is just that. Not much to say here other than that "Rock & Roll Doctor" is by far the worst song in all of Sab's discography. By just looking at the title you cna tell the whole thing sounds like a terrible glam rock imitation. It kicks off to a promising start, only to transition to a cheesy boogie-woogie structure with stupid lyrics and the most godawful chorus ever.Fun fact: Bill Ward is beating the living *** out of a cowbell the entire song, I kid you not. Seriously though, I recommend listening to this song on YouTube or something simply because it's so ***ing bad that it's....well...actually kind of good.
Finally, under a landfill of watered down hard-rock radio crap, the closing track actually happens to be one of my favorite Black Sabbath songs and a fan favourite in general. "Dirty Women" is an absolute killer whne you see them live (which is why I'm glad they revived it on the setlist) because it's a kickass riff-fest . The energy from this song is palpable and just never lets down until the very end. The lyrics describe Ozzy's horny quest to find a ho down in the red light district, with a catchy chorus that will stick in your head all day:
"Oh dirty women, they don't mess around
Oh dirty women, they don't mess around
You've got me coming, You've got me going around
Oh dirty women, they don't mess around"
It's a bit odd because you'd think that dirty women actually do "mess around"...that's why they're "dirty" in the first place, right? But with the lyrics aside, it's one of Sabbath's best songs in any case.
When you put it into perspective, three good songs isn't enough to pay for this So I'll have to go with the cliche in reviews and recommend you only really get this if you're a fanatic who's hellbent on collecting everything in their discography. Otherwise, don't put down money for this crap, or it's followup record "Never Say Die!". Listening to stuff like this makes you glad Black Sabbath got their stuff together and brought in Dio.
Recommended Songs:
-Dirty Women
-You Won't Change Me
-It's Alright
