Review Summary: A contentious anomaly in the Sabbath catalog that is still a worthwhile novelty.
BORN AGAIN remains one of the more contentious anomalies in the Black Sabbath catalog. It’s an album that some fans have hailed as an underappreciated classic. Others seem to feel that the Demon baby emblazoned on the front cover should have been smothered in the crib.
Much of the disparity among critics comes down to misaligned expectations. BORN AGAIN was seen by many fans of both Purple and Sabbath as an enjoyable novelty that shouldn’t simply be judged against Sabbath’s prior releases. Ultimately such comparisons were inevitable and BORN AGAIN hasn’t fared so well living in the long shadow of the Black Sabbath name. This decision to retain this lofty moniker wound up adding some tarnish as Iommi made music with other collaborators that didn’t live up to the band’s original standards. BORN AGAIN could be considered the first of these albums.
As an admirer of Ian Gillan’s prior work with Deep Purple and his own solo bands, it was much easier for me to accept the changes his influence brought to the band. Ian has always added his own distinct wry twist in his tales, offering a knowing “wink and chuckle” to his listeners. His approach was quite dissimilar to the almost Biblical seriousness of Geezer’s treatises about war, drugs and trying to make sense of our life on Earth. Ronnie James Dio had an eloquent way of weaving fantasy imagery within metaphorical riddles that usually obscured a more profound message. It’s not difficult to see why Sabbath fans might have felt a little confused about the identity of the band when confronted with such profoundly different lyrical agendas.
My best friend shipped me a copy of BORN AGAIN on vinyl as a present just after it was released in September 1983. I’ll admit that I was expecting something a bit more amazing than what I first heard. Upon further spins of the record, it wasn’t difficult for me to re-calibrate my expectations and find several songs that were I really liked.
Side one opens with “Trashed”, which is Ian’s recounting of one of his misadventures while staying at Richard Branson’s studio, The Manor. Each of the band members had been assigned a rental car during their stay. Ian decided to borrow Bill Ward’s car one drunken evening and gloriously wrecked it. Poor Bill always seemed to be on the receiving end of his bandmates pranks! In the chorus, Ian offers his half hearted thanks and apologies for his misbehavior that evening:
“Ooh, Mr. Miracle. You saved me from some pain.
I thank you, Mr. Miracle. I won’t get trashed again.
Ooh, can you hear my lies?
Don’t you bother with this fool. Just laugh into my eyes!”
Musically, “Trashed” is propelled by a boisterous Iommi riff that seems perfectly suited for a song about driving a car way too fast. The chugging E bass pulse of the bass notes give the song a similar feel to “Neon Knights”. The guitar solo is a spiraling attack with a very harsh, trebly tone. Geezer’s bass is right up front in the mix throughout. “Trashed” was released as a single, but failed to make the US or UK pop charts. The very bizarre promotional video for “Trashed” did little to improve public reception for the song. Oddly enough, the song wasn’t included in their live set list for this or any other tour. Despite its poor track record, I still enjoy this song and it would seem an obvious highlight for the album.
“Stonehenge” is a moody instrumental piece that eventually segues into “Disturbing The Priest”. The spacey sound effects are created by a combination of Geezer’s pedal board tricks and a Chinese gong submerged in water. Quite reminiscent to “E5150”, “Stonehenge” might seem just like a bit of fluff to casual listeners, but it was actually nicely executed in my opinion.
“Disturbing The Priest” contains several powerful Iommi doom riffs. Ian’s cackling, laughing and shrieking suited the ambience of this track very nicely, which seemed slightly reminiscent of his own song “No Laughing In Heaven”. “Disturbing The Priest” was a highlight of their live show and a personal favorite as well on this record.
The lyrics were actually inspired by a rather polite exchange that Ian had with a local vicar during the recording sessions at The Manor. The vicar informed Ian that the sessions were making choir practice very difficult for them. Ian agreed to change his recording schedule a tad to allow the vicarage a reprieve from his yelling, shouting and screaming. The lyrics of the song are actually more about the necessary balance of having both good and evil in the world.
"The devil and the priest can't exist if one goes away.
It's just like the battle of the sun and the moon and the night and day.
The force of the devil that we're all told to fear.
Watched out for religion when he gets too near too near."
“The Dark” is yet another sound effects filled instrumental track, but it is much shorter than “Stonehenge”. I would have almost argued for dropping one of these instrumentals from Side 1 if they hadn’t segued so naturally into the songs they preceded. Yes, it’s a bit more fluff, but it might as well have been part of “Zero The Hero”.
I’ve always had mixed feelings about the heavy rolling behemoth that is “Zero The Hero”. The song is dominated by cyclical bass riff the guitar follows for the most part. Iommi intersperses some great apocalyptic sounding guitar riffs, but mostly follows Geezer’s bass part. Like “Child In Time”, Ian offers us yet another tale of a loser, but this time he’s much less sympathetic. For whatever reason, I’ve never felt any great love for this song. The main riff just seems to go on and on and on for over seven minutes!
The songs on side 2 seem much less epic sounding than what preceded them. “Digital Bitch” takes the pace up a notch with some Priest-like riffing. Ian rants and shrieks about a spoiled brat of a woman whose father’s fortune has paid her way through life. He’s made it perfectly clear that he wants nothing to do with this woman while shrieking incessantly that she’s a “digital bitch”. On one hand, I’m glad to hear that Ian’s wasn’t just phoning in his performances for this album. However, his banshee wailing during the outro does make me thankful that the song is a relatively brief one.
The power ballad “Born Again” is actually one of the better songs on the album, although it seems to have received much less attention. Ian’s multi-tracked vocal performances are particularly noteworthy here. The rest of the band is in a much more subdued and complementary role and the final result is very pleasing to the ears.
“Hot Line” is a chugging rocker with a guitar riff that seems vaguely similar to “Lady Evil” (from HEAVEN AND HELL). Like “Digital Bitch”, Ian is screaming his head off throughout the song, so you can skip this one if you’ve already got a migraine. To be fair, it’s a decent song, but not an especially memorable one.
The album ends with “Keep It Warm”, which alternates between an infectious sliding guitar lick and a more sweetly sentimental chorus that gears this song a bit more towards being a ballad. Ian makes a point to direct the lyric towards his girlfriend by inserting her nickname frequently. “Keep it warm….Red!” It’s really a nice enough song, but just wasn't special enough to become a fan favorite.
One of the more obvious faults of the album was the somewhat muddy sound quality of the final master mix. Band members have pointed fingers and made excuses for how this occurred. To date, the remastered editions have only been able to make a marginal improvement to the sound. Ultimately, it would require a remix from the original master tapes to truly remedy this problem.
I’ll concede that BORN AGAIN hasn’t aged very gracefully. The production and performances can often seem just a bit too over the top to the point of self parody. That said, it does still possess a certain charm for myself and other Gillan & Sabbath fans that can still appreciate the novelty of this brief collaboration and accept this album, warts and all.
