I guess votes for Glenn Hughes don't count, so it becomes a statistical anomaly.

These polls don't have the capacity to do <1% in them. That, and yes, it doesn't recognize Glenn Hughes as a proper answer.

45% + 40% + 12% + 2% + 1% = 100%

Fixed, I guess.

I voted for Dio.
Because "Mob Rules" grabs me harder than any Sabbath record.

I should be able to vote again...

Come on guys, 2 days left! Don't let Ozzy win

This raises interesting questions about the semantics of cause and effect. If I already voted for Dio and Ozzy wins, did I let Ozzy win?
Furthermore, does this prove that democracy is flawed?

If it makes you feel better, if it was just Dio vs Ozzy, then Dio would have most of the Tony Martin votes and be winning.

Tony Martin deserves to be winning...

For me there's no doubt... the 'ozzy' era IS Black Sabbath... those albums are the ones that define the band for me... the band was at it's best for at least their first 6 albums... not so sure about Technical Ecstacy and Never Say Die tho...

On the other hand... Ozzy was probably their worst singer... Dio was my favourite and in my opinion even his technical abitlity was surpassed by Ian Gillan... I just prefer Dio's voice...

I found each of the vocalists to be good in their own way, but I've got to go with Ozzy. The original Sabbath just had a certain haunting, raw tone that holds a special place for me.

If the vote was on technical capability it would be Martin, or maybe Dio.

But despite Ozzy's flaws as a vocalist, there just can never be anything to replace the original Sabbath, with Ozzy half-crazed and completely off the rails -- and the band putting out music for the first time that would define an entire generation of Metal.

I will never understand why people like Ozzy. He's a terrible vocalist and responsible for none of Black Sabbath's greatest lyrics. While he's technically credited on all their songs, the writing of Heaven and Hell and the circumstances around the fact that Bill Ward and Geezer acknowledge not writing parts but still being credited lead me to believe that the band had an arrangement to credit everyone whether they contributed anything at all. Ozzy's greatest contribution to Black Sabbath is arguably that he didn't get in the way of Iommi and Geezer which in a perverse way was vital to the creation of the first eight records. Maybe Ozzy did have stage presence and maybe some people might legitimately enjoy his nasally tone usually covered in layering to disguise the lack of vocal ability, but to compare Ozzy to Dio, Martin, and even Hughes in the running as Black Sabbath's greatest vocalist seems laughable, although I stress again that it is possible to enjoy Ozzy.

I voted for Dio not only because of his vocal talent but also the effect he had on the band's growth. Unlike Ozzy, he was also able to sing above the riff which allowed Iommi to write in a way that just wouldn't have been feasible with Ozzy. Songs like Heaven and Hell or the Mob Rules just wouldn't have ever happened if Ozzy hadn't been forced out of the band and I feel only another Never Say Die would have happened if Iommi had remained constrained to Ozzy's limitations. However, a large part of my preference for Dio as the best Sabbath vocalist also has to do with the fact that he could hold his own on Ozzy-era songs (something that would have penalized him if he couldn't). I love Dio's singing on Live Evil from that distorted Iron Man introduction, his maniacal laughing on Black Sabbath, or even the standard but superior by virtue-of-talent renditions of War Pigs and Paranoid. He not only worked with Black Sabbath to move onto a new place but he could also achieve the sinister of his predecessor.

Those who voted Ozzy are going to feel really stupid when the new album drops and he sounds like shit.

How? I think a lot of people are picking Ozzy because of how awesome the old Ozzy Sabbath records were, not based off of how he is currently.

I'm going with Ozzy. No matter if he's pussywhipped, shivering and old drunkard by now, he's still part of the legendary Sabbath.

Still, I have to say that Heaven and Hell is propably the Sabbath album I listen to most. But even that has one or two songs, that are not so good. With Ozzy they made 6 great albums in the 70's, and nothing can take that away.

If I had gone with how awesome the early Sabbath Ozzy records are and how dear they are to me and how much I think his vocals fit the music, then I'd have voted for the fallen prince. However, as far as singers by themselves go, it's a pretty easy choice for me. Namely Dio.

Easy for me. Dio is my favourite singer among the three, and the albums with him are my favourite Black Sabbath albums.

But let's not suggest a much older Ozzy on the new album is comparable to when he was in his prime, so people don't vote on the strength of his voice today.



But what? the guy was a founder, he was THE voice of the heavy metal/doom band known world wide as Black Sabbath, your influencing voting by suggesting a later vocalist is the better Black Sabbath, but without Ozzy it's a different band - only the name remains the same (the others changed their playing style (tempo's?) to accommodate later singers). It seems unfair to say Dio is the better Black Sabbath when his albums sound so much different to the bands earlier material, they're much more upbeat, with his powerful semioperatic voice, hardly what you'd expect to hear on a band which was originally so.. funeral.
It seems the point and age at which people were introduced to B/S will heavily influence who they vote for, I'm simply saying Ozzy is the real Black Sabbath whether you like his style or not.

We're not talking about who sang on Black Sabbath's best/most influential albums. We're talking about who's the best frontman/singer the band ever had.

I'm completely incapable of judging the vocalists as a wholly separate entity from the music.

If we're talking about who I'd rather hear in a fucking doo wop acapella group outside a '30s barber shop it is OBVIOUSLY going to be Dio. But we're not. It's about who was the best with Black Sabbath, and to me that means you have to judge their vocals in the context of the music they're singing over. Ozzy doesn't win for me because I like the early riffs (albums) better, he wins because he sounds so incredibly appropriate/perfect over those riffs.

That.

Mindshadow, I wasn't trying to influence the vote. I was simply trying to make people realize that there's something else than Ozzy Sabbath, if someone who wasn't familiar with Tony Martin and discovered him because of me, my mission is complete. BTW, I discovered the band with Paranoid, like almost everyone, but I prefer Martin and Dio 'cause I can be objective . And the whole purpose of the poll (I made it, maybe it wasn't clear) was to choose who was the best front man the band ever had, not the singer who sang on the best material.

This is pretty much how I view it as well. While I like all of their albums except maybe Seventh Star and the last two Ozzy albums, the first six with Ozzy are my favorite. I feel his voice fits very well with the music.

In that case, I vote Ray Gillen

Voted for Dio because of vocal ability, quality of music (if just for H&H, at the very least...), frontman charisma, etc.

Weird, I've always thought of Mob Rules as the weakest Sabbath record with Dio (including TDYK).

I'm all for postponing the end date until Dio wins.

Really? That's interesting. I like Mob Rules a lot better than Dehumanizer and TDYK. I still really dig Dehumanizer, just rarely dig it out for whatever reason. Mob Rules feels like a really natural extension of Heaven and Hell to me.

I'd love to read a droneriot review on Dehumanizer.

Yeah, Mob Rules and Heaven and Hell are both flawless for me. Two damn perfect albums of incredible heavy metal - not a bad song on either if you ask me. People like to cite "Lady Evil" and "Country Girl" among others as weak points but those are some of the best ones on the albums really. I think people forget that Sabbath is bound to have a few rocky numbers on any album, being that they sort of sprang out of a rock environment anyway and just sort of stumbled into metal.

I am a fan of all of the singers of Black Sabbath. My personal favorite is Ozzy, followed by Dio. All of the old albums with both of those singers are phenomenal.

Dio and Martin might be better singers, technically and otherwise, but that doesn't change the fact that the albums they sang on are rather ho-hum in comparison to anything on the first six. Or the fact that I enjoy Ozzy's singing on those first six vastly more than either Dio on his three/four albums or Martin on his five. With that said, I do enjoy Dio and Martin more on their solo albums than Ozzy on his.

I can't be alone in thinking that Mob Rules is the strongest of the Dio era, surely?

It's not far behind Heaven And Hell, at any rate. It's strange that it's almost never even mentioned together with H&H even though they're almost equally good, and Turn up the Night is one of Sabbath's best songs in any era.

I thought the same when I saw the poll. Technically speaking there's no way Ozzy could be better than Dio or Tony (both very gifted and professional singers).

Ozzy was and is terrible as a singer IMO, he just had the 'luck' to be part of the first line up. When I listen the Live Evil stuff, I still prefer the Dio versions over the Ozzy ones and I heard first Sabbath with Ozzy back in the 80's.

If Sabbath were to record an album, I wouldn't use Ozzy as well; he lost his voice around 10, 15 years ago.

Well, VirginSteele_Helstar is with you (see a few posts above).

Some of my all time Sabbath and RJD songs are on 'Mob Rules' (TSotSC & FotEotW), but I just think H&H is a stronger album overall. Quite like Dehumanizer and TDYK too, but not nearly as much as either albums from Dio's first run in Sabbath.

Ozzy for the legacy.

Dio for the awesome.

Martin for holding his own against both.

I don't find the non-Ozzy era's sound different from other bands. It is just plain traditional heavy metal in my ears, while the early Black Sabbath releases with Ozzy is truly unique and genre defining, and to this day they still sound amazing. I don't think I've even heard all the other albums, because I just don't find them special. Some people say Mob Rules is their best, but I don't even care for it. I don't dislike it, I just haven't found it interesting.

Well, despite several efforts to reiterate or even clarify it, this thread's OP remains misunderstood by some, it seems.

Ozzy sucks and has *always* sucked.

Any later Sabbath singer, as well as fairly much any then-rival bands' lead singers would have done a FAR better job on Sabbath's original run of classics. I just gave fucking 'Master of Reality' its first spin in months and, perhaps thanks to this thread, I was annoyed by his off-key babbling like never before. Seriously, people! Go back to Sabbath's classics and actually pay attention to the vocals. They suck most of the time, and don't even "fit in with the music yadda yadda" on all tracks. Ozzy never could fucking sing.

(Some people are batshit insane over here, by the way: I read statements as fucking crazy as all Ozzy-era Sabbath albums are metal masterpieces from the debut to 'Sabotage', maybe even to 'Never Say Die!'... Half of those albums have fillers aplenty, and all of them have various numbers of non-metal tracks, be real people! Landmarks, of course, perfect masterpieces, let's think again.)

And then, to think some people won't enjoy Manilla Road because Shelton's poignant, epic vocals have a nasal quality to them... But Ozzy's A-OK, let's just crown him the best fucking singer ever. Rarely prick was as fucking lucky as he was, to find himself in the right place at the right fucking time.

Almost was going to write a serious reply to this one, then I noticed the bold, brown letters on the left side, forming into "LegendMaker".

Let's not confuse "being on key" with "fitting the mood of the music" now, LegendMaker. As far as I've heard, Dio never really did a good job on the Ozzy material, let's face it, he was passable, sure, but it was always a bit too, well, believe it or not, dramatic (in that Dio-y "big plastic dragon" kinda way) for those songs. He sings a little too well for the Ozzy stuff, I guess So, theoretically, who are we getting on those albums, instead? Robert Plant? David Byron? I really can't imagine it working.

So you settled for a non-reply sprinkled with implied mockery. Nice and classy.