Seventh Star: Deluxe Edition [Original recording remastered, Extra tracks, Import]

 

 

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The only Black Sabbath album with Glenn Hughes on vocals. The only one released under the somewhat silly name "Black Sabbath Featuring Tony Iommi". The first one to feature no original members except Tony himself, with Geezer and Bill departing after the disasterous hiring of a new singer named Dave "Donut" Donato, a male model. That bore no fruit, and Iommi instead toiled away on what he intended to be his first solo album....

Finally, Seventh Star has been given the Deluxe Edition treatment. I've been waiting for some kind of official release of the music video version of "No Stranger To Love" for 24 years. Finally it is available on this Deluxe Edition, along with a pretty good live show featuring Ray Gillen on vocals. I already have a Ray show on bootleg (a very common one called The Ray Gillen Years) but this is a completely different show with a different setlist.

Seventh Star as an album probably never should have been released under the Black Sabbath name. It's truly a solo album that Warner Bros didn't want to release as a Tony Iommi album. So here it is, an official Sabbath album. If that didn't occur, would Sabbath as an entity even have continued? I doubt it. Sabbath here consists of:

Tony Iommi - guitars
Glenn Hughes - lead vocals
Dave "The Beast" Spitz - bass
Eric Singer - drums
Geoff Nicholls - keyboards

Only Iommi and Nicholls remain from previous Sabbath lineups. You know Glenn Hughes of course from his soulful wail in Deep Purple, and Eric Singer from his later work in Kiss. Here, the five musicians coalesce into a more commercial version of Black Sabbath. The hard hitting riffs are still there, the frenetic solos, the mystical lyrics, the pounding drums. Yet these songs are more melodic. Glenn infuses them with a touch never heard before on a Sabbath album. Whether that is to your taste, only you can decide. Personally I love almost every song on this album. I find the standouts to be "In For The Kill", "Seventh Star", "Angry Heart", and "No Stranger To Love". Only "Heart Like A Wheel" bores me, a slow blues that doesn't really go anywhere.

As mentioned, the video version of "No Stranger" is included, which I have never found anywhere else. For years I had it on VHS and I thought there were female backing vocals. This remaster reveals that it's actually Glenn.

The remastering on this CD is quite excellent. The drums have a fullness that wasn't there before. The guitar absolutely sizzles. The liner notes are nothing new, just recycled from a previous edition of the CD, as are the included photos.

The bonus disc contains a show featuring Ray Gillen on vocals, after Glenn's vocal problems forced him to resign. The Ray Gillen show reveals that Ray was really trying to be Ronnie James Dio. Personally I find Ray's renditions of the Sabbath classics to be very overwrought, especially on "Black Sabbath". Only two songs from Seventh Star are played. (You can get Ray's version of "Heart Like A Wheel" on the Ray Gillen Years bootleg, as well as "Sweet Leaf".) While Ray's tenure in Black Sabbath was brief, it was important. There are some singers in Sabbath's history that were never recorded (only one song exists with Dave Walker, none with Dave Donato) but Ray did complete a tour and a studio album which was later re-recorded. Ray helped keep Sabbath alive before the addition of Tony Martin, Cozy Powell and Neil Murray could later stabalize it and bring the credibility back. This show, while not stellar, is an important piece of the Sabbath puzzle. It is the first official release of any Ray Gillen material with Sabbath. (More came on the special edition of Eternal Idol as well.) The sound quality is slightly better than bootleg.

One beef: The old style Deluxe Edition slipcases from previous Sabbath remasters have been replaced by a sticker that goes around the entire case. This needs to be cut or removed to open the disc. Not a huge deal, but I would have preferred that all my Sabbath Deluxe Editions have a uniform look.

This remaster is not for Sabbath snobs. You know the kind. "Sabbath suck without Ozzy!" or "Dio is the best!" Sabbath's history is far longer and richer than that, and there's room for all kinds. Just one question: How the heck did we skip a Born Again special edition? I have that entire album in demo form plus an unreleased song. Let's pray that a Born Again special edition is coming. Let's hope for Headless Cross too...may as well wish for the moon!

5 stars.

To some Black Sabbath was Ozzy's old band, to some it was the band that had 3 albums with Dio but to real followers of the band who stuck long after either of those singers left Black Sabbath. Those are people who don't understand that Iommi IS Black Sabbath, he continued the band once the success was a thing of the past because Sabbath is his baby and just couldn't watch it die. Iommi kept Sabbath alive because he was the only one who never left and he has seen many musicians come in and out of the band over the years. "Seventh Star" was released in 1986 and was supposed to be Iommi's solo album, that's the way it turned out because it doesn't sound so much like Sabbath but the record company wanted to label it as a Black Sabbath album. The album was credited as Black Sabbath Featuring Tony Iommi" to please everyone; it's ironic because by this point Iommi was the only original and real member of the band by this point!

In my opinion the singer for the album Glen Huges (former Deep Purple) is a much better singer than he is given credit for; he is simply underrated because of the legendary singers that were in Black Sabbath before him: Ozzy Osbourne, Ronnie James Dio and Ian Gillian. For some Black Sabbath fans there is nothing good at all after Ozzy or Dio, that is understandable but those fans choose to overlook "Seventh Star" and the rest of the albums the band released and may miss out on some great music. Huges sounds great on songs like "In For The Kill" and the title track, I remembered him from early Deep Purple albums and thought he sounded great on those as well, he's an excellent singer.

Seventh Star has some great songs: "In For The Kill" is without a doubt the heaviest song here with a Sabbath sounding riff, I think it's one of the best songs on the whole album. "No Stranger To Love" is an attempt to do a ballad and it sounds lighter than anything Sabbath has done before, a great song, it's very rooted in the sound of the era but it remains a good one. "Seventh Star" is an epic song, I consider either this or "In For The Kill" as the best song on the album. "Heart Like A Wheel" is very melodic and has more great singing from Huges. The rest is good as well, no real filler except perhaps the instrumental "Sphinx (The Guardian)" (which is not really an instrumental it's sounds put together to make the following song more epic I guess)and they sound like they all belong on the same album.

"Seventh Star" might deceive someone expecting a Black Sabbath album because while it features excellent music it's not Black Sabbath. It sounds like what it was supposed to be and what it should be looked at: a Tony Iommi solo album. As I said it doesn't sound much like Sabbath, it's a poppier album in many ways minus cheesy lyrics that many bands used in 1986. SS has some very good songs, great singing, riffs but it's not the Black Sabbath sound it's very different. If you are looking for a Sabbath album you will be deceived but if you're just looking for some good rock'n'roll then this album is likely to please you because that's exactly what it is good r'n'r. I'll give 3 1/2-4 stars fans of the band should check it out it's not bad at all.

The only reason this was called a Sabbath album was due to pressure on Iommi from management, to which he acquiesced. The Sabbath name took a bit of a hit as a result, and the album never did very well. That's too bad, because once you get past the Sabbath controversy it's a pretty good hard rock album with strong tracks, good playing and decent if not great production. Mine is an English import (Seventh Star was never released in NA on CD) and it sounds a little muddy. Not great but certainly worth a listen, and tracks like the title track, "Heart Like a Wheel" and "Danger Zone" are worth the price of admission. As well, it's a great opportunity to hear Eric Singer (KISS) beat skins in a different context.

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