In September 2020, Zakk Sabbath released their long-awaited ‘Vertigo’ album, on which legendary guitarist Zakk Wylde and friends recreated the Black Sabbath debut as faithfully as possible. Everything was well played, but with the band taking such a traditional stance, there were moments where you’d wonder why you’d ever choose to listen to it over the original recording. There were a couple of tracks of great interest, however, such as ‘Wicked World’ where the band loosened their grip on self-imposed authenticity and added more of their own flair and ‘N.I.B.’ which proved that Zakk Wylde plus and indestructible riff will often result in something great. The album was well received by fans, and despite any misgivings about long-term interest, it was important that the band got a studio recording under their collective belt after working the live circuit for so many years.
Tag Archives: metal
SINNER’S BLOOD – The Mirror Star
A new band for 2020, Sinner’s Blood have similarities to Russell Allen’s Level 10 and Jeff Scott Soto’s SOTO project in that their material has a genuine heaviness, but the majority of songs on their debut release ‘The Mirror Star’ also have unashamedly huge choruses. At their best, those choruses will invite you to sing along, but with frontman James Robledo often sounding like South America’s answer to Jorn Lande or Russell Allen, there’s every chance that singing at those volumes will cause untold damage – if not to yourself, at least to your immediate neighbours.
Watch: Sacrilege share new video for ‘In Hell’
In the summer of 2019, Sacrilege released ‘Court of The Insane’, a shamelessly old fashioned metal album that managed to be one of the worst discs of the year. Workmanlike riffs dredged up from 1984 coupled with lyrics like “Am I guilty of the things what they say / And who are they anyway?” led to an unintentionally funny listening experience.
Moving forwards, the veteran UK metal band’s contribution to 2020 is a re-recording of an old song titled ‘In Hell’, for which they’ve shared a brand new video.
ZAKK SABBATH – Vertigo
Black Sabbath’s debut LP turned 50 years old in February 2020. The band did not release an expensive box set to mark the occasion (they left that for the October anniversary of ‘Paranoid’, where the 5LP reissue was prohibitively expensive and the CD box set was just a quick repackaging of the 40th anniversary edition). There wasn’t even a notable vinyl reissue of the seminal debut recording – but to be fair, as welcomed as that would have been, no vinyl pressings sound anywhere near as good as the original Vertigo spiral label edition. Instead, fans and press were invited in limited numbers to go to a pre-arranged location in London and listen to the album in pitch darkness.
WAR CLOUD – Chain Gang EP
With their 2017 debut release, US metal titans War Cloud championed a very old fashioned style of music. In tracks like ‘Red Witch’, their debt to the roots of Black Sabbath seemed obvious, while in faster paced material it was easy to trace influence directly back to ‘Stained Class’ era Judas Priest. What the record lacked in originality, it made up for with musical chops and a lot of enthusiasm. 2019’s ‘State of Shock’ gave the world more of the same, but cranked up the energy. By chucking in the odd riff borrowed from Diamond Head and Kiss, the band mined classic rock’s rich past a little further with some very retro results. Understandably, by this point, those who liked War Cloud seemed to really love them.
Although a global pandemic ground the world to a halt in 2020 and put an end to live gigs for the foreseeable future, War Cloud maintained their presence with a pair of releases. ‘The Earhammer Sessions’ presented choice cuts replayed live in the studio and, although a strong career overview, didn’t really provide much of an alternative to the original recordings, while ‘Chain Gang’ – a two song stop-gap EP – gave fans something more to enjoy while the band considered their next move.
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