Rating: 10 / 10 Stars
BLACK SABBATH is: Ozzy Osbourne (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Geezer Butler (bass); with Brad Wilk (drums, studio tracks), Tommy Clufetos (drums, live tracks), and Adam Wakeman (keyboards/guitar, live tracks).
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REVIEW – There are farewell tours, and then there is BLACK SABBATH saying goodbye in Birmingham.
On February 4, 2017, BLACK SABBATH brought The End Tour home to Birmingham for what was billed as the band’s final performance. After nearly five decades of helping shape the sound, attitude and sheer physical weight of heavy metal, Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler returned to the city where it all began and closed the door on one of the most important careers in heavy music history.
Now, on November 17, Eagle Rock Entertainment will release The End (Live), a document of that final Birmingham performance.
For Sabbath fans, this is more than another live album.
This is the last show.
That knowledge hangs over every second of the record.
The set opens with “Black Sabbath,” and there really could not have been another choice. The bells, the rain and Tony Iommi’s infamous opening riff immediately pull everything back to the beginning. It is the sound that changed heavy music, performed one final time by the men who created it.
Nearly fifty years after Sabbath first made rock music darker, slower and infinitely heavier, they open their farewell concert by returning to the exact place where the nightmare began.
It is perfect.
“Fairies Wear Boots” follows, keeping the early Sabbath attack firmly at the center of the set before the band reaches into Vol. 4 for “Under the Sun / Every Day Comes and Goes.”
That selection alone shows that this isn’t just a parade of obvious hits.
BLACK SABBATH have enough songs that they could have filled an entire farewell concert with nothing but radio staples and still sent everybody home happy. Instead, the set digs deeper into the catalog, giving longtime fans material that reminds us just how strong those early records were from beginning to end.
“After Forever” keeps the momentum rolling before the band drops into “Into the Void,” one of the heaviest riffs ever committed to tape.
And this is where The End becomes more than a nostalgia piece.
BLACK SABBATH’s influence is so enormous that it is sometimes easy to forget how strange these songs must have sounded when they first appeared. Thousands of doom, sludge, stoner and heavy metal bands have spent decades pulling ideas from the Sabbath catalog, but hearing “Into the Void,” “Snowblind,” “War Pigs” and “Children of the Grave” performed by the originators reminds you that the source still carries a weight most imitators never quite manage to duplicate.
Tony Iommi remains the center of that gravity.
There may be no guitarist in the history of heavy music who has done more with the power of a simple riff. Iommi doesn’t need to fill every second with notes. He gives the music room to breathe, lets the guitar hang in the air, and then lands the next phrase with enough force to make it feel inevitable.
Everybody thinks they can write an Iommi riff.
Very few can.
“Snowblind” gives Ozzy one of the night’s most recognizable vocal showcases before the band tears into “War Pigs.”
“War Pigs” remains one of the greatest heavy rock songs ever written, and hearing it on Sabbath’s final night gives the song an extra layer of weight. The slow build, Butler’s bass, Iommi’s guitar and the spaces between the notes all work exactly as they should. The performance doesn’t need any reinvention. It just needs BLACK SABBATH to sound like BLACK SABBATH.
They do.
“Behind the Wall of Sleep” follows, setting up one of Geezer Butler’s defining moments in “N.I.B.”
Geezer has always been more than the bassist standing underneath Iommi’s riffs. His playing moves around the guitar, filling the low end with its own personality and giving Sabbath much of the physical force that separates the band from so many groups that followed.
“N.I.B.” is still one of the best demonstrations of that chemistry.
From there, the set pushes through “Hand of Doom” and into a medley built from “Supernaut,” “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” and “Megalomania.”
If there is a complaint, it is that you want all three songs in full.
But that is also one of the strangest pleasures of a farewell concert. There is never going to be enough time.
BLACK SABBATH could play three hours and somebody would still walk out wondering why their favorite song was missing.
“Rat Salad” gives Tommy Clufetos room to stretch out before the concert moves toward the songs no Sabbath farewell could possibly omit.
“Iron Man” arrives with one of the most recognizable riffs in rock history.
At this point, we are no longer talking about songs that simply belong to BLACK SABBATH fans. “Iron Man” has long since escaped the confines of the band’s discography and become part of popular culture itself.
But in Birmingham, on this night, it belongs to Sabbath again.
Then comes “Children of the Grave.”
If “Iron Man” is one of the band’s defining riffs, “Children of the Grave” is one of the clearest examples of how far ahead of their time BLACK SABBATH really were. The song has movement, urgency and aggression that still sounds dangerous decades later.
It is the perfect setup for the encore.
And there is only one song that can finish this.
“Paranoid.”
No drawn-out farewell composition.
No sentimental rewrite.
No new song designed specifically to tell everybody goodbye.
Just “Paranoid.”
Short, immediate and unmistakable.
The final song from the final BLACK SABBATH performance.
Then it is over.
That ending is what makes The End (Live) so much more than another concert release.
Most Sabbath fans already own these songs several times over. We have studio versions, live versions, compilations, remasters and archival releases. Nobody needs another recording of “War Pigs,” “Iron Man” or “Paranoid” simply to know what BLACK SABBATH sound like.
What matters here is where these performances came from.
Birmingham.
February 4, 2017.
The final show.
That context changes everything.
The band that helped invent heavy metal came home to the city where it started and played the songs that changed the course of rock music one final time.
There is also one absence that remains impossible to ignore.
Bill Ward.
Tommy Clufetos does an excellent job behind the kit, but for longtime Sabbath fans, the missing piece is obvious.
Ozzy Osbourne.
Tony Iommi.
Geezer Butler.
Bill Ward.
Those four names belong together.
For all of the disagreements and circumstances that prevented Ward from participating in the farewell tour, it is difficult not to wish that the original four could have found a way to stand together in Birmingham one final time.
That does not diminish the performance captured here.
It simply leaves the smallest unfinished sentence at the end of an otherwise extraordinary story.
Rock and roll histories rarely end perfectly.
What matters is that BLACK SABBATH reached the finish line with their identity intact.
There is nothing more depressing than watching a legendary band keep going until the name becomes more important than the music. Too many groups continue long after the chemistry is gone, surviving through lineup changes and nostalgia because nobody wants to admit that the right moment to stop already passed.
BLACK SABBATH appear determined not to become one of those bands.
They announced the end.
They toured the world.
They returned home.
And they stopped.
There is dignity in that.
The End (Live) captures a band that has absolutely nothing left to prove.
Tony Iommi has already written enough riffs to influence generations of guitarists.
Geezer Butler has already established himself as one of heavy music’s defining bassists and lyricists.
Ozzy Osbourne’s voice is already inseparable from the BLACK SABBATH sound.
This album isn’t about establishing their importance.
History took care of that a long time ago.
It is about hearing these songs one final time while knowing that everybody onstage understands exactly what the night means.
From the opening darkness of “Black Sabbath” to the last furious minutes of “Paranoid,” The End (Live) feels like the closing of a circle.
Nearly fifty years after four young musicians from Birmingham stumbled onto something darker and heavier than the rock music surrounding them, three of those original members returned home and performed the songs that changed everything.
Heavy metal does not end with BLACK SABBATH.
It cannot.
They have already guaranteed that.
But one of the greatest chapters in its history has ended.
On November 17, fans will finally be able to hear that last night for themselves.
BLACK SABBATH didn’t simply say goodbye. They went back to Birmingham, turned the amplifiers up one more time and reminded everyone exactly why the music they created will outlive them all.
For more information on BLACK SABBATH, visit:
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www.YouTube.com/BlackSabbath
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