It’s funny. I was looking for a photo to go with this post to mark the two-year anniversary of the death of Ronnie James Dio, and I saw the above picture and was like, “Wow, that’s amazing!” Sure enough, it’s the same one I used last year on this date. At least I’m consistent.

Still much missed, and as I watch Black Sabbath fumble and engage in contractual disputes and don’t hear anything about Tony Iommi‘s own bout with cancer (though they’ve scheduled more shows, and I guess that’s something), all the more so. I don’t want to dwell, so here’s a clip from 1984 of the band Dio doing “The Last in Line” at the Spectrum in Philly that says it better than I ever could anyway:

Awkward and obscure as the name is, guitarist Dave Chandler did right in naming Saint Vitus’ first album in 17 years Lillie: F-65. The title refers to a barbiturate the band used to take, and in many ways, that’s just what Lillie: F-65 is: A classic Saint Vitus downer. One might compare the situation that brought it about to Pentagram and their 2011 release, Last Rites. I’m not sure if there’s as much at stake personally for any one member of Vitus as there was for Pentagram frontman Bobby Liebling in that record, but in terms of pivotal American doom acts pitting their legacies against studio offerings that marked new eras, it seems a fair analogy despite a few key differences. Saint Vitus are arguably the single most important and influential band in American doom – certainly on the West Coast – and Lillie: F-65 (released by Season of Mist) renews the recording partnership of Chandler and vocalist Scott “Wino” Weinrich. The two exceedingly charismatic personalities have intermittently torn down stages the world over for the better part of the last three years, and together with bassist Mark Adams and drummer Henry Vasquez – who replaced a then-ailing Armando Acosta (R.I.P.) in 2009 – the 2012 lineup of Saint Vitus stands ready to honor both its own legend and the influence that inspired the band in the first place. Several of Lillie: F-65’s successes come in doing just that.

Chandler, as the principle songwriter of this and all Vitus material, wastes no time tapping into the primordial immediacy that made the band’s earliest work so powerful. Some of these lines, some of these riffs are so easy as to be obvious, and yet they are characteristically Chandlerian, and the more one listens to Lillie: F-65 – or any Vitus album, for that matter (how easily the new one fits in the lexicon of the band should say something as to its quality) – the more one can discern the blueprint behind the songs. Structurally, they are as they’ve always been: Simple, high-grade pop put to nefarious use. His vocals mostly following Chandler’s riffs, Weinrich nonetheless makes a landmark of nearly every chorus – to wit, “Let Them Fall,” “The Bleeding Ground” and “Blessed Night” – and delivers lines with feeling and drama worthy of any performance in his storied discography. For his part, Adams is in the Geezer Butler role – appropriate, considering how much of Vitus has always been derived from Sabbath – quietly, unassumingly turning good songs, like the above or the side B duo “The Waste of Time” and “Dependence,” into great ones with warm low end that’s both classy and rudimentary. I’ll say flat-out that he sounds the best on these tracks that he’s ever sounded in Saint Vitus, and part of that credit has to go to producer/engineer T. Dallas Reed, who positions him mix-wise so as to fill out the songs and highlight the character in his playing without stealing the spotlight from Chandler’s guitar, which without question is running the show.

That’s one of the things Saint Vitus has very much done right on Lillie: F-65. Another relates specifically to Vasquez’s drumming. Anyone who’s heard his work in Blood of the Sun can tell you the dude can throw down in true classic rock style. Indeed, that’s most of what Blood of the Sun (in which he also handles vocals) does. But that’s not what he does here. Adapting his style to the simplicity of the songwriting, Vasquez honors Acosta’s contributions to the band while maintaining a personality of his own. He does not indulge in long fills. He does not unleash double kick for its own sake. Instead, he hits remarkably hard and shows that he has obviously become an integrated part of the band over the last three years of time on the road. Along those same lines, Saint Vitus also plays it smart in keeping Lillie: F-65 short. Their 1984 self-titled debut was 35 minutes long, 1985’s Hallow’s Victim 34 and 1986’s Born too Late (their first album with Weinrich on vocals) also 35. Lillie: F-65 is a bullshit-free 34:29, right in line. The closest they come to any kind of indulgence is a Weinrich-penned acoustic interlude called “Vertigo” that comes between “The Bleeding Ground” and “Blessed Night,” and even that serves the purpose of allowing a few minutes of breath between those two landmark cuts and adding to the overall depressive atmosphere the album creates. One could argue closer “Withdrawal” – which is three and a half minutes solid of Chandler’s guitar feedback – is an indulgence, but I think that’s missing the point, since the track’s pretty much as close as Vitus is ever going to come to saying to their fans, “Hey, thanks for buying our record, here’s the fucked-up mess of noise you came for.” And you know, he’s right.

Half an hour before that, though, it’s Vasquez who has the honor of starting the first Vitus record since 1995’s Die Healing reunited them with original singer Scott Reagers, and he does so with a fittingly unceremonious bass-drum/crash cymbal count-in. Four hits and “Let Them Fall” is underway, and as if that wasn’t up-front enough, the song begins with its chorus:

“Why do I scream at them
They never listen
Why do I beat my head
Against the wall
I made a simple plan
They complicate it
Now they’re near the edge
Let them fall”

From the mere shape of the lines, one can almost discern the lumbering rhythm with which Weinrich delivers them; the ebb and flow – or better, rise and fall – of Chandler’s much-imitated patterning allowing for almost as little hope to peak through as the lyrics themselves. While Vasquez keeps time on his crash and Adams supplements the riff with deep, swarming low-end, Weinrich adopts the voice of god – or whatever omnipotent creator force you want to substitute for god, mother nature, etc. – giving up on humanity. Want to start a doom album, kids? That’s a pretty good way to do it. The song itself is strong enough and enough in line with classic Vitus anthems that it could’ve easily carried the record as a title-track – a move that would’ve aligned it to tracks from the band’s discography like “Saint Vitus” from Saint Vitus, “Born too Late” from that album or “Children of Doom” from 1992’s C.O.D. – but either way, it’s an immediate hook that sets the course for the rest of the album’s songs. It’s the shortest of the non-interludes or outros, but of undeniable substance and memorability. Plodding, miserable, and gloriously primal – it’s the best-case scenario for what Vitus could do on Lillie: F-65.

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First off, to a lot of people, he doesn’t. For better or worse, probably the majority of those in the legions who would attend the original-member reunion Black Sabbath announced in November either don’t know or don’t care about “the drummer.” They’re there to see Ozzy Osbourne sing “Paranoid” and maybe watch Tony Iommi play the “Iron Man” riff. Geezer Butler‘s bass and Bill Ward‘s drumming are secondary concerns.

These casual fans, those who would just show up, probably don’t realize it was Butler who wrote the lyrics Osbourne sang or that the rhythm section played such a huge role in making Black Sabbath‘s earliest records — 1970’s Black Sabbath and Paranoid, 1971’s Master of Reality and 1972’s Vol. 4 — as heavy and groundbreaking and stylistically definitive as they were. And even if they did realize, or even if they heard the band themselves say so — I know Iommi said it flat out in the Classic Albums: Paranoid DVD — they still wouldn’t care.

Outside of the context of the heavy rock underground that still so vehemently flies the flag of and takes influence from those four albums in particular, Black Sabbath is a heavy metal footnote en route to Osbourne‘s solo career and the commercialization of metal that first took place in the ’80s and continues to this day. Black Sabbath is important, but they’re more important because Pantera or Slipknot or Metallica says they are than because Master of Reality was a life-changing event.

Last Thursday, when Bill Ward released his statement that the contract he was offered was “unsignable,” the internet almost immediately blew up with support for his case. My feed on Thee Facebooks — which, though I don’t use it as a measure of overall cultural relevance, at least lets me know what people are talking about — still has posts of pro-Ward propaganda memes like those I’ve included with this post: “Back Stabbath,” “No Bill Ward, No Black Sabbath,” “Bill Sabbath” t-shirts. Sloganeering from people who (I would say rightfully) appreciate Ward‘s contributions to the original lineup. In an era that produced many great British drummers — John Bonham, Carl Palmer, Ian Paice, etc. — Ward‘s work stands out as singularly characteristic. No one before or since sounds quite like him, executes a fill quite the same way or keeps the same kind of swaggering beat that makes “Lord of this World” one of the heaviest songs ever put to tape.

Iommi, Butler and Osbourne released a response to Ward expressing their regret that the drummer had, “declined publicly to participate in our current Black Sabbath plans.” Somewhat predictably, it wasn’t long before Sharon Osbourne was scapegoated as trying to ripoff Ward or pull some shady business deal. It was a quick leap from:

to:

Sometimes I think “Sharon‘s a cunt” is the heavy metaller’s “These colors don’t run.” She’s enacted several truly despicable moves in the past — whether it was pelting Iron Maiden with eggs at Ozzfest or replacing the original drum and bass tracks on the first two Ozzy Osbourne solo records — and I think she often gets blamed for the tarnish to the public perception of Ozzy that came out of his buffoonish portrayal on the reality show The Osbournes, which saw him go quickly from the “Prince of Darkness” to a helpless, hapless oaf in the minds of fans and pop culture at large.

Blaming Sharon Osbourne for shrewd, callous or ethically questionable business decisions undertaken on behalf of her husband — she’s his manager, after all — is convenient, and sometimes, fun. She’s an easy scapegoat, and putting the fault on her saves longtime fans from accepting the reality that Ozzy himself — who’s nothing if not likable — is probably behind or at very least approving of what’s seen as happening completely without his input. Whether she’s a cunt or not, I don’t know. I’ve never met her or spoken to her, and I think a lot of women in business are open to being cast as bitches because of their gender where the same actions would be celebrated by their male counterparts. I’d have a hard time celebrating a dude for having Mike Bordin and Robert Trujillo replace Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake‘s recorded tracks, but I probably wouldn’t call him a cunt for having done it. An asshole, maybe.

So I don’t think it’s so much a question of whether or not Sharon Osbourne is at least occasionally a classless jerk — history bears out that opinion of her as it does of most of us — as it is of how the negative view of her is cast by fans of Black Sabbath and Ozzy. Yoko didn’t break up The Beatles and Sharon isn’t ruining Black Sabbath. I won’t pretend to know the complex personal and professional histories between the members of the band, but last I heard, Iommi owned the band’s name, and as he’s been the only consistent member throughout the band’s many lineup changes over the last four decades, it’s easy to assume he’s the one calling the shots, not Sharon, or even Ozzy.

Where that puts Ward‘s position in this whole thing, I don’t know. The perception when Heaven and Hell got going and Ward wasn’t involved was that the conflict was between he and vocalist Ronnie James Dio, but maybe that was only part of the story, or none of it at all. It seems like every time Black Sabbath picks up in one incarnation or another, Ward is a question. He initially left the Dio-fronted lineup of the band after 1980’s Heaven and Hell album, came back for 1983’s Born Again, left again, rejoined with the original lineup in 1997, then left citing health reasons, and intermittently took part in touring after that. When I saw them on Ozzfest in 2005, I remember thinking to myself that I should appreciate Ward‘s performance particularly, since I didn’t know when I’d see him play drums again.

Which I suppose brings us around to the original question at the top of this post: Why Bill Ward matters. Black Sabbath has a long history without him, and it’s not like he was writing the riffs or the lyrics or singing on the songs. Tommy Clufetos from Ozzy‘s solo band can play those parts convincingly — as could any number of other drummers, so if you’re going to say one particular lineup of Black Sabbath is definitive and the rest aren’t, well, there are a lot of people out there collecting royalties on Sabbath records they played on who’d probably argue the point.

Bill Ward matters in the songwriting. When Black Sabbath took the stage for their press conference/announcement last November, they established the premise of a new album with Iommi, Osbourne, Butler and Ward. Together with producer Rick Rubin and apparent fan ambassador Henry Rollins (who elected him to that role remains a mystery, but he keeps showing up in it), they discussed what a new Black Sabbath album with the original lineup would be, what it would sound like and how it would come together. They said, in effect, “We are a group of musicians who have come together to create something that is definitively Black Sabbath.”

If Black Sabbath is going to be defined then as the original lineup — and I’d gladly argue that was the tone of the press conference — then without Bill Ward‘s contributions to the songs in writing his own drum parts, the character of the band changes. It’s not the reunion they said it would be, but instead a new incarnation of the band that happens to be fronted by Osbourne and have Butler on bass. Those passionate about the idea of regrouping the original Sabbath are right to feel betrayed: Without Bill Ward in the songwriting process, they invariably won’t be getting the product they were promised.

And in that, Ward is not blameless. If he felt his contract untenable, he shouldn’t have taken the stage with the band in November and said he was on board for the reunion. However much you like these people or think they’re not out to screw you over — and however much they might not actually be — that’s just bad business, and a band that makes as much money as Black Sabbath does on a reunion tour is unavoidably a business. It’s naive to think otherwise.

Best case scenario for a new Black Sabbath album was that the original lineup put out a record that was a decent answer to Heaven and Hell‘s The Devil You Know, that wasn’t a complete AutoTuned embarrassment that sullied the already-tried legacy of the band’s highest creative peaks. But even so, the proposition was special because it was the four of them doing it. When I interviewed Eric Wagner in December, he discussed his relationship with his former bandmates in Trouble and said, ” Those four guys are the only ones who know what it was like to do what we did… I can talk to them and they know exactly what I mean and what it felt like and what we went through.”

No doubt in my mind that Tommy Clufetos is a capable drummer. He wouldn’t have been in Osbourne‘s band if he wasn’t. But in terms of the bond between the original members of Black Sabbath — everything they’ve seen and done together, how they’ve triumphed and fallen apart and hated each other and been best friends — no one else can stand in for Bill Ward. That’s why Bill Ward matters.

But not only that. Bill Ward matters to the fans. I’m not talking about the people above who show up on a Friday night because it’s something to do. I’m talking about those of us who, to one degree or another, live by this music. Ozzy Osbourne is a famous person; untouchable. Tony Iommi is a god; thoroughly unapproachable. Geezer Butler — bless his genius heart — is the (endearing) model for doom-dude awkwardness. Of the original four, Bill Ward is the one I believe most when he says he loves Black Sabbath‘s fans. Whether he actually does or not is a secondary concern at best — he engages the followers of Black Sabbath in a way and on a level that the other founding members simply do not.

For a band whose influence has had the cross-generational reach that Sabbath‘s has had, that’s an important function to play. Without Bill Ward, the fans to whom the band really matters can’t fool ourselves into thinking they’re doing it for any reason other than the money, and even if they worked everything out at this point and Ward rejoined the songwriting process and they picked up right where they left off before going to the UK to work on account of Iommi‘s lymphoma diagnosis and treatment, some of “the magic” is already gone.

That wouldn’t be the case if Bill Ward didn’t matter.

Iommi, Osbourne, Butler, Ward. Don’t promise Oreos if you’re bringing Chips Ahoy.

Admittedly, it’s a cruel, heartless question to ask, and yet, can there be any doubt as to the answer? Could anything ever top Master of Reality? I ask the question mostly because I want to see if anyone sticks up for Vol. 4, which, apart from “Changes,” is about as flawless as an album can get. With the recent terrible news of Tony Iommi‘s lymphoma diagnosis, I think we’re due for a good time. So let’s have some fun.

Earliest Black Sabbath was nothing if not a coalescing of various elements into a cohesive whole. A kind of cultural distillation, ground down and remade into the singular most formative basis of doom — the album Black Sabbath. Only months later in 1970, they released Paranoid and refined the darkness of the first record, adding range and sonic breadth. While the title-track became the band’s signature piece, “Electric Funeral” and “Fairies Wear Boots” grew into the anthems of a subculture within a subculture, and they remain so to this day.

However, every time I put on Master of Reality and listen to it straight through, with each successive track, I say to myself, “This is the heaviest shit ever made.” And each song proves the prior assessment wrong — yes, even “Solitude” — until finally, “Into the Void” offers clear and indisputable truth of riff. It is pure in its muck, and as perfect as stoner rock has ever gotten. The standard by which the genre is and should be measured: the heaviest shit ever made.

But what about Vol. 4? It seems to have an answer for every challenge Master of Reality throws at it. A “Snowblind” for “Sweet Leaf,” “Supernaut” for “Into the Void,” “Under the Sun/Every Day Comes and Goes” for “Lord of this World.” 1972 found Black Sabbath a more realized beast with a perfected heavy rock that seemed to already know the tropes of the metal genre it was shaping.

I could go on. I won’t. Is “Changes” enough to hold back Vol. 4 from standing up to Master of Reality? There are people who consider “Solitude” a misstep of similar magnitude. I leave it to you to decide in the comments.

You know the scenario. You can only pick one, so which is it?

Stole this news right from Blabbermouth, and I expect I’m not the only person to do so this afternoon. Wishes for a complete recovery go without saying, and I know that headbangers, riffers and all the other miscreants around the world who’ve been touched by Tony Iommi and Black Sabbath‘s work over the years have the man in their thoughts today.

Legendary Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi has been diagnosed with the early stages of lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphocytes, a type of cell that forms part of the immune system.

Iommi, 63, is currently working with his doctors to establish the best treatment plan and remains upbeat and determined to make a full and successful recovery.

This comes as Black Sabbath — Ozzy Osbourne (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Geezer Butler (bass) and Bill Ward (drums) — are writing and recording their first album in 33 years in Los Angeles (still set for release this fall) with producer Rick Rubin. They will now go to the UK to continue to work with Tony.

If you’re reading this and you celebrate either the Jesus-in-Christmas or the secularized Xmas, then chances are congratulations are in order: You’ve made it through another one. The Patient Mrs. and I got back a little bit ago from the last of the familial hoedowns, and with that, an episode of Iron Chef America and our collected loot strewn about the place in Roman-style excess, the evening seems to have come to a conclusion. I hope you had a good one.

Since Friday was my office party and — class act that I am — I got loaded early, I never officially closed out the week, and I thought some Blue Cheer would be the way to go. In the car up to Connecticut and back yesterday and today it was Deep Purple, Sungrazer, Warning and Kyuss, but holiday Cheer is about as close as I get to holiday cheer, so I hope you enjoy it. I haven’t drooled over Outsideinside in a couple weeks anyway, so I’m due.

If you’re in the US and don’t have to work tomorrow, I hope your weekend continues to be excellent and that you get to relax a bit before having to cram five days’ worth of work into four the rest of this week. If Xmas isn’t in line with either your belief system, you’re celebrating Hanukkah, Lemmy‘s birthday, something else or nothing at all, I hope you had a good weekend whatever it may have entailed.

Along with a shit-ton of laundry, tomorrow I’m going to try to make my way through reviewing the new BeenObscene album, and this week I’ll have Six Dumb Questions with guitarist/graphic artist Scott Stearns of the recently-reviewed Bibilic Blood and the semi-recently-reviewed Morbid Wizard, as well as, I think some new music from Dwellers, who were reviewed just a couple days ago. Very timely around here all of a sudden.

In any case, much fun to come this week, so please, stay tuned. In the meantime, see you on the forum and back here tomorrow for more good times.

Of all the doom albums that have come out of America since the birth of the genre, these are probably the two that are the most singularly influential, the most pivotal, and at their base, the most doomed. Saint Vitus released their self-titled debut on Greg Ginn‘s SST Records in California in 1984, and one year later, the East Coast answered back with Pentagram‘s Relentless essentially marking the beginning of what we think of today as Maryland doom. The question of which is the superior album seems ridiculous even to ask, since I feel like what we should be doing is just being glad they were both made, but here goes:

Saint Vitus‘ Saint Vitus flew directly in the face of what was expected both of SST and of the SoCal underground. It was slow, it was lurching, and it was miserable. Saint Vitus did not have Black Flag‘s sense of self-righteous social rage — they had slow suicide with booze and pills. Their message was not of rising above, but of being buried at sea. Scott Reagers‘ vocals remain a blueprint for doom singers to follow, but try as so many do, the same black magic has never managed to be captured. Together with the foreboding bass of Mark Adams, the noise-infected guitar of Dave Chandler and Armando Acosta‘s unbreakable plod, the combination of elements was overwhelming. Even now, listening to Saint Vitus makes you feel like you’re drowning in it.

But if Chandler‘s guitar tone ever had a rival in that era, it came from Victor Griffin. One listen to the churning malevolence of “All Your Sins,” and there’s no question you’re hearing some of the most wretched doom since Sabbath‘s heyday. As much as Pentagram came to be known later for frontman Bobby Liebling‘s fabled drug addiction and a constantly rotating lineup, with Griffin, drummer Joe Hasselvander and bassist Martin Swaney (who had performed together as the trio Death Row), the band’s overdue first full-length was a milestone, and 26 years after its release, the title Relentless feels no less appropriate. “Sign of the Wolf,” “The Ghoul,” “Relentless,” “20 Buck Spin” — these are the standards by which we measure what doom has become since.

I could go on at length about both these records, but you get the point. Here’s what it boils down to: Two epics, two black covers, two of American doom’s greatest, and you’ve got to pick one. Damned if I can choose, but if you’re feeling more decisive, please, have at it in the comments.

Mike H. posted the link on the forum to a Billboard article of the announcement. I guess I should be excited about this, since it’s Sabbath, but really, does a Rick Rubin-produced new Black Sabbath record with Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward sound like a good idea? I was kind of hopeful for an Iommi collaboration with Ian Gillan after the Whocares single was released earlier this year, but Ozzy-fronted Sabbath? As much as I hate to say it, I’m skeptical.

That said, any excuse to see Geezer Butler play bass is good enough for me…

Here’s the news, pilfered from the above-mentioned industry trade:

Black Sabbath is reuniting to record its first studio album with original frontman Ozzy Osbourne since 1978, and will support it with a massive 2012 tour, sources have confirmed to Billboard.com.

The group made the announcement during a press conference today (Nov. 11) at the Whiskey A-Go-Go in Los Angeles, where Sabbath played its first show in the city exactly 41 years ago. Black Sabbath will headline Download Festival, which will take place between June 8-10 in Donington Park, England. Meanwhile, Rick Rubin will produce the group’s comeback album, which is expected to be released in fall 2012 through Vertigo/Universal.

Rumors of new Sabbath activity have been swirling for months, with Osbourne recently telling Billboard.com that new material was “a very, very strong possibility. It’s in the very early stages, so we haven’t recorded anything yet.”

Guitarist Tony Iommi, who wrote extensively about the band in his new book Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven & Hell With Black Sabbath, also told Billboard.com that he regrouped with Osbourne, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward at Osbourne‘s California home earlier this year to play some music, “For a bit of fun, and to see if we could all play. It was good, but it was just purely, ‘Let’s have a go and see what happens.'”