Technical Ecstasy (1976) and Never Say Die! (1978)

I’ve been spending a post per album in this series, but from here on out we’ll be combining multiple albums in one post. This doesn’t mean everything heretofore is superior to or more deserving of comment than everything else, just there’s only so much I have to say about some things. Another way of putting it: just because I gave every song a deep dive doesn’t mean that you have to. 

(1976)

The idea behind the cover is robots having a quickie on an escalator and then moving on, sort of a commentary on 70s Looking for Mr. Goodbar culture. Pretty self-explanatory, I guess. This is as close as need Sabbath to come to exploring sex of any kind. 

As Geezer said later about this and the next record: "Back then, you had to at least try to be modern and keep up. Punk was massive then and we felt that our time had come and gone." And you can hear that self-consciousness on both records. But I'm sympathetic. No one forms a band to just play the same songs the same way over and over again or to stop evolving with whatever scene produced them in the first place. I imagine, too, when you're Black Sabbath or Alice Cooper or any onetime-shock-to-the-status-quo/bold-new-direction, those new zeitgeist warriors are felt even more keenly.

My favorite bits of TE happen on side two: “All Moving Parts (Stand Still)” (what a cool groove) and “Rock and Roll Doctor,” which came on random shuffle once really loud and I had no idea it was Sabbath and was like “What the hell is this, this is great.” I recommend this approach with Technical Ecstasy (and Never Say Die! As well)  - pretty much every song sounds better if isolated from the rest of the album. Anyway I'm an easy mark for any such sentiments. The kid in me thinks they're really talking about rock and roll and not cocaine. Either way, though, whatever works.

Broad overtures to “rock and roll” were popular in the 70s, too, of course, and possibly this was the band pitching their efforts in such a direction. (Possibly Kiss?) I hear Greg Lake (“It’s Alright” sung by Bill Ward) later-era-sad-Ozzy (“She’s Gone”), or more prog-type arrangements (“You Won’t Change Me”) in the mix. 

(1978)

Titles with an exclamation point always crack me up. I used to use examples of how adding one changes the effect completely (“imagine if it was Forrest Gump!” was my go-to example) but literally any example will do and they're all perfect. 

The cover is… cool? Dumb? I can’t tell which. In such circumstances I default to cool.

The back cover works for me just fine, either way. Just like the composition.

They continue their experimenting with 70s sounds on this one. The title track is fine, but Ozzy’s vocals aren’t great and there’s really noting to the riff or arrangement, it’s just kind of an unembellished chord progression. “Johnny Blade” and “Shock Wave” and “Air Dance” all bounce between sort of sounding like other contemporary bands, from Kansas to Thin Lizzy, singalong bro-rock (“A Hard Road,” would’ve been perfect for a certain era of Oasis), and “Over to You” starts promising but doesn't really go anywhere.

Standout tracks:

“Junior’s Eyes” This one really gets in your head. Ozzy’s vocals aren’t great; I guess he was kinda out-to-lunch in the mid-to-late 70s. Anyway I get a mental image of a strangled muppet on Ozzy's vocals in some spots. Cool production, though, and perfectly valid track. I like that Sabbath expanded their comfort zone. 

“Breakout” This is just their filler-instrumental/ ambience track, but it’s pretty cool. Definitely would’ve been great mix-tape fodder had I known it existed back in the day.

And probably my favorite, the album closer, sung by Bill Ward, “Swinging the Chain.” At first I kind of loved this one ironically. Bill’s vocals are enthusiastic but strained, the riff and production are kind of a mess, and there’s the whole Fabulous T-Birds swagger of the ending (“You better be-liiieeeve it!”) which is fantastically ill-considered. And I still think all that, but then I just kind of grew to love the song and don’t want them to fix or change anything. 

I appreciate that the Ozzy era comes to a close with everyone in the band but Ozzy singing “You better believe it!”

~

And that’s a wrap on Sabbath mk1. Here’s how the first Ozzy era breaks down for me, pointswise * least to most favorite:

Technical Ecstasy

Never Say Die!

Vol. 4

Master of Reality

Black Sabbath

Sabotage

Sabbath, Bloody, Sabbath

Paranoid

* How the sausage is made: I assign each track a zero to five rating and add ‘em up, average ‘em out.

The above is just song points total. That can sometimes give a misleading score, as some albums just have more songs than others. (Typically this only becomes a problem when comparing albums from the CD era with those before it, as bands had more space to fill.) The above break down the same by average and total, except Sabotage and Black Sabbath are flipped.

My personal favorite, points or no points, will always be Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath.

I’ll take a break from Sabbath for a few posts before jumping back in with their 80s and beyond stuff. Behind the scenes I’ve already completed the big listenthrough, so now it’s the typing-up-and-sorting-out of the notes and bookmarks and revisiting a few things.