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ESSAY VI - ALBUM ARTWORKS
HEADLESS CROSS [1989] -

‘In the Graveyard of the Giants’

This essay may get a trifle ambitious, but as with my previous studies on the artworks of Black Sabbath and Paranoid, I wish to offer my individual interpretation on a subjective matter that remains deeply personal to each fan. Much like the paintings of famous artists on a wall, album covers remain constantly on show to us in our bedrooms and music rooms. To consider an artwork unimportant is to lose half of the value of an album, whether we consider it or not, they work on us subconsciously, and offer one small window into a world where the music becomes visual, and its aesthetics are mixed with fantasy and mood to produce something quite brilliant. Some artworks achieve this on a stronger level than others, and it’s not always possible to conclusively explain why, but this essay will attempt to at least partly uncover the mysteries of today’s chosen piece.

Sabbath’s artworks had struggled during the 1980s, but although many recoil from its bold grotesqueness, 1983’s Born Again presented a bizarrely apt image to accompany Ian Gillan’s polarising, yet undeniably unique venture into the Sabs canon. (It may even prove worthy of its own essay in time). Seventh Star and The Eternal Idol offered inexcusably bland artworks, with the latter seeming to be completely disregarded lyrically and holding relevance wholly and only to the title of the album. This essay however, is set to concentrate on one of the most underrated artworks in Sabbath’s history, and one, which holds (in this writer’s humble) a special relevance on the fateful state of affairs in the Sabbath camp, which ultimately led to the downfall of the Tony Martin era and the professional and emotional abandonment by Tony Iommi of that oh-so murky 80s period.

Headless Cross does what every great Sabbath artwork should do – haunts! It wafts out of the picture in an understated and ghoulish fashion, providing an excellent accompaniment to the re-worked, bold, brash and fully loaded musical style (which may not have the same level of maturity and texture of Eternal Idol,) but is refreshing nonetheless. A pitch-black moor-like setting, with a full moon obscured by a sliver of cloud above the tall, broad gravestone, with its eerie purple (or white depending on which version you own) glow, surrounded by a sea of mist. What is that, if not the quintessential Gothic setting? With this image, we are transported back to metal’s roots; born out of simplicity, of subtle horror and the promise of danger. It even takes us back (as on Black Sabbath) to the English countryside, as even the album’s title is drawn from Martin’s Warwickshire hometown of Headless Cross. This was the first Sabbath artwork for years to provide a vivid, darkly beautiful and perfectly atmospheric cover piece to enjoy along with the music. Its rich blackness, supernatural suggestion (teasingly left ambiguous) and the knowledge that beyond this small square image, there is a wealth of demonic, occult and downright weird phenomenon taking place, as is explored in the album’s music.

Our attention is first drawn to the broad, flat face of the cross, with the halo-like ring kneading through the crucifix to create eye-like slits for the moonlight to shine through. This image is intimidating, and it holds the attention of the viewer with a cold, hypnotising deviousness that is not easy to explain. Note that the point of view is of the beholder is placed below the top of the cross, adding to the level of intimidation, with those slit-eyes bearing down upon whoever gazes upon it. This placement of imagery may have more bearing on the artwork’s significance than you think, as closer scrutiny of its perspective may reveal one of two things. One; the viewer (when engulfed in the world of the image) is lying low, crawling or just rising from the grave to which this monument belongs, or that the cross of stone is in fact an enormous monolithic structure. (Note that from a distance, the oddly shaped rock to the left of the cross resembles a thatched-roof house, commonly found in the English countryside. A subtle optical trick to emphasise the size of the cross, perhaps).

To tackle the subject of identity firstly, you may have asked yourself the question of ‘Who does this gravestone belong to?’ No name, no floral tributes or identifying symbols exist to guide your estimations, and the cross exists entirely in a forgotten and forlorn world, and not even fellow gravestones grace its lonely cemetery. It has all the attributes of a medieval folk-tale, where a lone, giant monument to an unnamed corpse is likely to stir up innumerable theories and ghostly prophecies. In this writer’s humble, the total anonymity associated with everything within the cover is a subtle and powerful statement regarding Black Sabbath’s place in the metal universe and its discontentment (especially from Martin) with the long-shadow cast by Sabs’ 70s era. Headless Cross is widely considered by avid Martin-era fans to be its best offering to the Sabbath canon, and appears to be the only album of that period that Iommi recalls with any kind of fondness. This is possibly due to its good sales in the UK, the fact that switching to I.R.S. had allowed Iommi (the de facto leader of the group) a huge increase in creative control. This optimism finds its way into the music, as a plucky new contentedness and relish in the dark bounty of hellish imagery that saturate the record. When all of this is considered, the cross in today’s chosen artwork takes on a new wealth of relevance. Imagine, if you will that the circle surrounding the cross was not there, and what do you see? A tall, broad crucifix; something that you have no doubt seen a hundred times hanging from the neck of Ozzy Osbourne and Tony Iommi in photo-shoots and interviews. These crosses (according to Osbourne) were crafted by his father in the Aston steel factory that brought about the sound and inspiration for a sound that transformed heavy music forever. It is the symbol of Sabbath’s origin and with a keen eye you can see it standing right there in front of you, nineteen years on, and gracing the grave of some poor dead soul.

When this is considered, the boldness of this new album and the promise of resurgence for an ailing band appear to make sense. The melancholy and more self-conscious vibes of Star and Idol are shaken off with a set of songs which, may be more superficial and less fitting with the intellectual side of Sabbath, but are hard-rocking, free-living testaments to the mighty genre. Perhaps this cross represents the burial of old Sabbath, with its mass legacy, influence and generation-defining albums crammed beneath the misted, cursed earth, with this beastly marker placed as a warning and dedication to its past actions. This would no doubt account for the size of the gravestone, and the mass of earth needed to fill the grave, below which, all of the band politics, the Ozzy, Dio, Gillan, Hughes eras and all of the tiresome critic comparisons between new releases and the ‘golden age’ of Sabbath slumber hellishly in the graveyard of the giants.

The attitude here appears to be one of revival; and the circle ring within the arms and head of the crucifix attest to that symbol. That revival and circle of life is betrayed by the impossibly back night behind the grave, offering up a parallel to the dark mystery of Paranoid’s artwork (apt considering the oppressive influence that particular album held over every previous release). Lyrically also, the band strains to break free from its past and start afresh with a Hammer Horror recreation of the events that began the band’s dark journey in 1970. Lines in the much-revered ‘Headless Cross’ such as;

‘Look through the people, and on through the mist,
To the hill of the headless cross,
Where all witches meet, on a night such as this,
And the power of darkness is host,’

We have returned it seems, after all of the line-ups, scandals and failures to a new black mass, and a re-imagining of the witches meeting (as they did in ‘War Pigs’) and on the cover of that debut album to create a new age of evil music and the celebration of the dark side of life. This imagery, when placed in the context of Sabbath’s past is truly exciting, and almost feels as if Iommi, Martin and Co. are repeating the ritual, re-summoning the darkness and re-pledging themselves to that figure in black that has haunted them since their original union was formed. Not since Black Sabbath have the band made such a direct narrative-style connection between the lyrics and the artwork, and (IMO) this does but double the power of this concept and all of its suggestions.

If we continue to analyse the lyrics of ‘Headless Cross’, we come across an omen-like observation regarding the giant structure and its relevance;

‘From the first evil night, when a black flash of light,
Cut the crucifix half to the ground,’

This sentence may force us to re-observe the artwork and note that it is not in fact a headless cross. Only on the reverse of the sleeve can we see evidence of the cross being cut to the misted earth and left to crumble. This line, could either be considered to be Martin’s era asserting its dominance, and casting aside the legacy of its forerunners to place itself atop the current Sabs pedestal, or that it represents the inevitable downfall of Martin’s era, and the destruction of the short-lived ‘new Sabbath’. As we all know, the revival and resurgence gained with Headless Cross was short lived, as the far-less revered TYR dampened the spirits of the fans and the supporters, and Ronnie James Dio was re-introduced, leaving Martin out in the cold, before his two nineties efforts were also forgotten and consigned to failure. One may consider, darkly and coldly that the repeating of the ritual had been rejected by the figure in black, who had awoken, in a ‘black flash of light’, to tear down the Martin-era and re-instate the old guard; bringing back the Prince of Darkness and leading the band out to reclaim the title of heavy metal royalty with 13. This we cannot know for sure…but we can always speculate, that all is not always as it seems on the darker side of life…

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'Well, I'm a common working man,
With a half of bitter, bread and jam,
And if it pleases me, I'll put one on ya man,
When the copper fades away!' - Jethro Tull