Black Sabbath--Past Lives
Sanctuary/Divine 2002
Black Sabbath is one of the most important bands in the history of music. They single-handedly created an entire genre of music. With Past Lives, everyone can finally hear the original Sabbath line-up at the top of their powers in a vintage live setting. The results are as earthshattering as you'd expect.
Past Lives is essentially Black Sabbath's Live At Last album cleaned/beefed up, with a second disc which seems to be an attempt at a best-of-the-bootlegs collection. The Live At Last recordings are from the Sabotage era and you'd be hard pressed to get it any better than this. Great as always, and even more so with its newly enhanced sound quality, the highlight of these recordings is the "Wicked World" medley--featuring an amazing, bouncy, jazz-based solo jam from the original riff-master Iommi, as well as a brief take on the best track off the Vol.4 album, "Supernaut." This is Black Sabbath at their peak and is essential listening, to grossly understate the point.
The real treat of Past Lives is the second disc, though. Compiled from various concerts during the Ozzy-fronted years, some true gems have finally been brought into public view. The true gold of this material lies in three renditions of songs from the Sabotage album--"Hole In The Sky," "Symptom Of The Universe," and "Megalomania." First of all, the sound quality on these tracks exceeds that of everything else contained on either disc. Also, the performances are pretty tight--Ozzy's vocals being particularly incredible. These tracks provide a fascinating glimpse of a band at the crossroads and also hint at what was to come for Ozzy--the shift to a more straightforward sound on the Sabotage album makes it a sort of percursor to the style of stuff Ozzy has perfected over the course of his solo career.
Shelved for ages, then unproperly publicised and poorly pressed upon its release, the Live At Last recordings have finally gotten the proper handling they deserve thanks to Past Lives. This CD is an important historical document of maybe the greatest band that ever was. The uninitiated (what, are you living under a rock) would be best served to pick up copies of the superior Castle Records remasters of all the Black Sabbath studio albums before scoring this, though. Still, sooner or later, Past Lives equates to manditory listening.
PLEASE NOTE: There are two versions of Past Lives--one in a standard jewel case and one in a limited edition digipak. The way the stickers differ on these seperate versions, one could be led to believe that the digipak version has bonus tracks the normal one doesn't. Unfortunately, this is not the case--the only extras the digipak offers are a mini poster of the band and a Black Sabbath guitar pick. Certainly, this was just an editorial oversight--Ozzy and Black Sabbath have always been very giving and honest with their fans. Please, just be aware that the seperate stickers can be misleading when deciding on which version of Past Lives you need to purchase.
Get more info on this CD directly from DIVINE
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