Cross Purposes - Black Sabbath

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CROSS PURPOSES - 1994

Lead vocals: Tony Martin
Guitar: Tony Iommi
Bass: Geezer Butler
Drums: Bobby Rondinelli
Keyboards: Geoff Nicholls



I WITNESS

‘I witness, a time and a place that never dies, still frozen in time. This darkness, the only place that I can hide, I witness, a dream.’
The first song on the album opens it nicely. It starts ...
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CROSS OF THORNS

‘When a promise is broken, and no one trusts you and young ones crying with their heads in their hands. When you talk about saving, the souls of the faithful, you can’t help thinking you’ve got blood on your hands, from a cross of thorns.’
Good following song for ‘I Witness’ as the pace is slowed down and begins with again, a slow drum beat and guitar solo.


PHSYCHOPHOBIA
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THE BAND

A common misconception about Black Sabbath is that Ozzy Osbourne has always been the lead singer but this is not the case; the band formed in 1969 with Ozzy but in subsequent years, as you can see below, the lead vocalist changed quite frequently, and what’s more, the same people came back and left again… strange. Black Sabbath are a mixture of what I would call rock & heavy metal; they’re not quite soft rock like Bon Jovi and they’re not quite Anthrax either but they do have a combination of rock beats and squealy guitars which I think puts them in the middle of these two categories.

LEAD VOCALISTS

Ozzy Osbourne 1969 – September 1977
Dave Walker October 1977 – January 1978
Ozzy Osbourne January 1978 – May 1979
Ronnie James Dio May 1979 – November 1982
Ian Gillan January 1983 – March 1984
Dave Donato 1984 for a couple of weeks
Jeff Fenholt January 1985 – September 1985
Glenn Hughes September 1985 – March 1986
Ray Gillen March 1986 – August 1987
Tony Martin August 1987 – April 1991
Ronnie James Dio April 1991 – November 1992
Rob Halford November 14th & 15th 1992
Tony Martin Spring 1993 – December 1995
Band inactive January 1996 – March 1997
Ozzy Osbourne March 1997 – present

CROSS PURPOSES - 1994

Lead vocals: Tony Martin
Guitar: Tony Iommi
Bass: Geezer Butler
Drums: Bobby Rondinelli
Keyboards: Geoff Nicholls

I WITNESS

‘I witness, a time and a place that never dies, still frozen in time. This darkness, the only place that I can hide, I witness, a dream.’
The first song on the album opens it nicely. It starts off on an even pace and picks up as the song progresses, a lot of drums coming through on this one.

CROSS OF THORNS

‘When a promise is broken, and no one trusts you and young ones crying with their heads in their hands. When you talk about saving, the souls of the faithful, you can’t help thinking you’ve got blood on your hands, from a cross of thorns.’
Good following song for ‘I Witness’ as the pace is slowed down and begins with again, a slow drum beat and guitar solo.

PHSYCHOPHOBIA

‘My colours all ran dry, and now I see the world in black and white. It’s too late now, it’s time to kiss the rainbow goodbye.’
This is quite a dark one with a lot of reference to his state of mind, good imagery on this one and the pace changes towards the end.

VIRTUAL DEATH

‘I’m sick and tired of losing, you find this so amusing, it’s all I have to keep myself in this state I’m in.’
Quite a sombre song, brings attention to how he feels, basically like he’s going through ‘Virtual Death’, the words are drawn out to give the impression of pain, one of my favourites on the album.

IMMACULATE DECEPTION

‘It’s knowing that time keeps rolling on, night after day, day after night. It’s knowing that feeling of coming home, to where my spirit lies.’
Nice choppy pace to this one, chorus parts are slowed down and then quickened for the verse, good guitar solo here.

DYING FOR LOVE

‘Take a life and steal its shadow, all that’s left is humanity. Take a man and steal tomorrow, all that’s left is you and me, dying for love.’
This is a ballad describing love (of course, most ballads do)… although it speaks more of love for children and community than for an actual lover. Nice slow pace.

BACK TO EDEN

‘When you’re tired of giving reasons and freedom fighting, freedom. If you’re searching for an answer, we can bring you back to Eden.’
I like this one as it has a good even tempo and evens out the album kind of half way through as the album itself doesn’t really have a set pace.

THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE

‘No grave could be deep enough, down to hell if we were able. The veil of life was pushed aside, by the hand that rocks the cradle.’
Good strong vocals in this song which makes it one of my favourites.

CARDINAL SIN

‘When you sin cardinal sin, you make your bed and in it, you must lie. And your future’s looking grim, but did you ever give a damn about the child, he’s running wild. When you sin cardinal sin, don’t expect the world will treat you well, we say oh, go to hell.’
Great one for if you’re in a rage with someone for whatever reason, you can really belt out this song and feel 10 times better after it.

EVIL EYE

‘Got hell looking up, heaven looking down. People say the woman’s got an evil eye. Got hell looking up, heaven looking down, free me from the woman with the evil eye.’
Good one to end on; not too fast, not too slow and sums up the general feel of the album.

LISTENABILITY: 8/10
SONG CONTENT: 9/10
COMPILATION: 8/10

SUMMARY

This album has never grown old for me, it used to be something alternative to listen to, it grew into my ‘teenage angst’ album which I’d throw on when I felt the world and his brother were against me, and now it’s some easy listening for both good and bad times.

CONCLUSION

There’s something for everyone on this album (provided you like rock music) and I would definitely recommend it as a must buy… if you’ve heard ‘Paranoid’ with Ozzy as the vocalist and liked it, you’ll probably like this album.

You can buy it for between £8 - £12 from places such as Coda Music, Virgin Megastores, HMV or online at cd-wow.co.uk / 101cd.com.
 

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