The lyrics are some of the most retrospective on the record (“Is this the end of the beginning? Or the beginning of the end?”). Both tunes employ the “devil’s tritone” that Iommi helped popularize in metal–but in this song, he cleverly sneaks the tritone in later in the sequence of notes. The opening track starts with a series of resounding guitar notes that sounds an awful lot like the famous first notes of the song “Black Sabbath” from the band’s 1970 debut. See also: Five ’70s Metal Bands Who Are Better Than Black Sabbath
Here’s our track-by-track analysis of 13, including the band’s most self-referential moments. In fact, there is so much harkening back, they’re almost plagiarizing themselves.
BLACK SABBATH 13 FULL
(This is still 25% more than what passes for Queen nowadays, so we’ll consider it a win.) Hit machine Rick Rubin produced the record, which is chock full of doomy goodness, questions of good versus evil, and terrific Tony Iommi guitar solos and riffs that harken back to Sabbath’s genesis in the early ’70s.
So, really, we’re talking about three-fourths of Black Sabbath. Conspicuously missing from the classic Sabbath lineup is drummer Bill Ward, replaced by Brad Wilk (Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave) due to Ward’s contract issues. This is the first album since 1978 to feature original lead singer Ozzy Osbourne and the first since 1994 with bassist Geezer Butler. In case you haven’t heard, it’s kind of a big deal. Last week, Black Sabbath released 13, their 19th studio album.
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