After pulling out and listening to TYR I had to go back and listen to Headless Cross again and so this review appears.The instrumental opening "The Gates Of Hell" fairly typical for the time but the excellent title track kicks this album and made my ears perk right up as I missed the previous Tony Martin fronted album. After the lengthy title cut the Sabbath gallop appears in a more accessible way as it is produced for a very much commercial audience who were at this point in love with the MTv Headbangers Ball program. Tony does a great job in the RJD forum of vocal styling on the excellent "When Death Calls". Listening to this again post Ronnie's passing is eerie. Still a great track and now I think I like it just a little bit more.
One of my favorites from this album is the monstrously good "Kill In The Spirit World" with the creepy breakdown before the excellent solo by Iommi. This song is probably the closest you can get to merging RJD and Ian Gillan into one voice. Martin does at many times sound a little like the brilliant Gillan and that only does justice to the album. Here and there are hints that Iommi is moving into the power metal genre to a more epic sound. "Call Of The Wild" does a good job of blending the genre's together in a manner that keeps them commercial enough. I have to admit a really great re-master that adds some more punch to the guitars would be welcomed because a song like "Black Moon" would sound so much better.
Some of the balding generation still think the outdated sound they grew up with can't be done any better, no matter what they hear, they reject the new sounds of their favorite bands.This is a terrible because in this case they are really missing out on some great heavy metal/hard rock. I'm a Black Sabbath fan and I can ebb and flow between their singers easily but I can't get into the last two Osbourne album at all and don't like the Gillan fronted album much at all. This is one of the Black Sabbath everyone who's a fan should own for sure.
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