Originally Posted by Trollheart

Artiste: Black Sabbath
Nationality: British
Album: Cross Purposes
Year: 1994
Label: IRS
Genre: Heavy Metal
Tracks:
I witness
Cross of thorns
Psychophobia
Virtual death
Immaculate deception
Dying for love
Back to Eden
The hand that rocks the cradle
Cardinal sin
Evil eye
Chronological position: Seventeenth album
Rank: Adept
Comments: Oh I like the little cheeky riff from “Black Sabbath” tossed in at the end of the opener! But I'm amazed that's not Dio on vocals; sounds just like him on “Cross of thorns”. Next one is terrible, almost more punk than metal, but then we're back on track with “Virtual death” and that big crushing guitar of Iommi. Vocal harmonies are very good too. “Immaculate deception” sounds like a song title more suited to Slayer, but in fact it turns out to be a little too proggy for its own good. Having said that, Wiki shows the genre here as Power Metal, and I'm finding it hard to argue with that. It's kind of not the Sabbath I know and love, though it is in some places. Odd.

I listened to this in the hope of filling in some of the gaps in my Sabbath knowledge, and while it's not a bad album there's something definitely missing. Maybe it's that Ronnie and Vinnie had left, and Geezer was making plans too, or maybe it's that it's the first I've heard with Tony Martin on vocals (who does a really good job by the way) but it feels like the fun isn't there anymore. Sense of a wake rather than a band? As Monty Burns once said, where's the love? I don't feel it.
Intention: Unlikely to be returning to this any time soon.

Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien

There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as ‘patriotism’, may remain a habit! But it won’t do any good, if it is not universal.