Wow, 28 years later and a new album finally arriving? Longest gap between albums evar? =O

EDIT: I duuno why, but I'm exicted even though the later stuff was kinda meh.

I hate it when bands give their albums names that are simply numbers, though that's not what's most important; what is, is NEW SABBATH!

What an incredibly uninspired name for an album, especially considering that we got one with THE EXACT SAME NAME from Megadeth last year.

Also, I thought Tommy Clufetos was doing the drums, not Brad Wilk.

There is no way the album can be anything close to as good as H&H's The Devil You Know.

Did anyone even for a nanosecond think it would?

No matter how uninspired the name "13" is, it's still infinitely better than Th1rt3en. This could turn out to be either extremely awesome or extremely horrible. Soul suckingly blandless is also an option ofcourse.

18 years later, actually. But it is 35 since their last record with OZZY, yeah.

Ah, yes, thank you for correcting me.

Still, 18 years is a long time.

I totally almost called this one, just swap around the green smoke with fire.

Well at least we got some foreboding trees.

Well Rick Rubin is producing it, so even if the songs are awesome his ability to masturbate acid all over an album mix will ruin it most likely.

Also, as massively retarded a name "Th1rt3en" is, it looked a LOT better on the album cover itself than by just typing it out. The number "13" as an album title is stupid no matter how you show it.

Would NOT have had Brad Wilk on any list of drummers I thought would be performing on the album. I'll chalk this up to the Rick Rubin connection. An unexpected decision by far, but one that could prove to be beneficial in hindsight. Of the more "obvious" choices, Vinny Appice is doing his thing with Kill Devil Hill and they're recording a new album right now, which I'm looking forward to, and Mike Bordin's been doing live dates with Faith No More. If the spat with Bill Ward is about money only and not about his health and ability to still perform consistently, then it wouldn't hold water to say that anyone's passing up a big paycheck if we're looking at it as merely recording drum tracks. That's to say nothing of actually touring with the band, of course.

It's been a foregone conclusion that in spite of being doctored to hell, Ozzy's vocals will be the weakest link by far. Ideally, I'd prefer longer instrumental sections in the songs with as little verse-chorus-verse structure as possible, but that's asking too much. That's been the consensus since the reunion talk began, so we don't need to go further with that. It's all about those Iommi riffs for me, and hopefully Geezer's lyrics as well. This has been his only sincere output for the majority of Tony's career and its shown with every album, regardless of who else has or hasn't been involved. I see no reason to expect anything less than the high standard of musicianship that's synonymous with his name. Everything Black Sabbath has been, for better or worse, has come from his hands. Overly optimistic? I'd say so, but I'm being mindful of the potential flaws as well. Anticipating them, even. I was more than happy to sign off The Devil You Know as the ultimate end and that IS a Sabbath album as far as I'm concerned. A fitting adieu to Ronnie James Dio. Something about being alive to see my first Tony/Geezer/Ozzy full-length album come to fruition, however, does add a certain level of anxiousness to it.

7H1R733N. Let's do this, Black Sabbath.

Who gives a shit what the album is called? Talk about wasting time on meaningless details.

The real news here is that Brad Wilk is completing the band. Which killed most of my enthusiasm for this album.

A song name leaked as "God is Dead." Sabbath haven't been this original since they invented heavy metal in 1970!

Well, I'll remain cautiously optimistic. I'm definitely going to give the new songs a listen. You don't just ignore something by Sabbath.

Except that The Devil You Know in 2009 was Black Sabbath in every way, shape and form other than name.

Their last new songs with Ozzy were in 1998.

This should be at least pretty solid. I mean I can't imagine it being bad or anything - even the worst Ozzy stuff I've heard isn't unlistenable or anything, and Iommi's riffing is always great. I'm expecting more of a rock album than 2009's The Devil You Know's foray into bone crushing doom, but still, could be a good album, who knows. I'll give it a chance even if the album title does suck a lot.

Oh yeah, forget about that one.

And a source, for the '98 songs? I never heard about those...

And they were so damn good but nobody remembers them!

Ehh, I like Dio(RIP) and Heaven and Hell, but I actually consider them a different band, even if the all of the members are/were in Black Sabbath

Still, good point about them being essentially Black Sabbath under a different name.

You're not missing anything. They were garbage.

If you really like to suffer, they're called Psycho Man and Selling My Soul.

Can't say I'm really excited. I think everyone's too old and it's been too long to pull off a truly great album. Ozzy's voice is terrible these days so having him slur over some generic riffs doesn't sound very fun to me. Also, the new drummer isn't exactly Sabbath material. Hopefully he can play better than he does on the Rage albums otherwise it'll be even more bland. I just don't think they've got it in them any more. Smell like a last attempt cash grab before they all retire.

Hope this album blows me away. I quite enjoyed The Devil You Know.

It will be interesting to see what happens with this album. I was impressed with the Heaven & Hell album. However, Ozzy has been terrible for years.

Brad Wilk REALLY threw me off as a choice for a drummer. I hate RATM, so can anyone tell me how skilled he actually is?
Can't wait to hear a leaked song or two anyway. I trust them to create some decent songs.

The title is dumb and the drummer is mediocre. LET'S SEE WHAT HAPPENS.

It's up to Iommi to deliver the riffs.

Right now I can't decide whether to actually look forward to this album or facepalm for the next half hour.

Ehh, not really looking forward to this. I don't have any hope that this will be a good album.

I'm not really liking the sound of any of this.

Their choice of drummer intrigues me - Wilk has been very creative with a very small drum kit with RATM, not being a drummer to stand out, but one to fit the music well. His change from RATM to Audioslave was interesting and seemed to fit the music just right. Should be interesting to hear, even if Ozzy's corpse sounds worse than "Changes".

In Ozzy's defense his last two albums weren't terrible. True they weren't "Paranoid" or "Blizard of Ozz" but they were still better than a lot of the shit that passes for music these days. As far as his voice being terrible have you heard David Bowie's new song? I'm a big Bowie fan and I was shocked at how old his voice has gotten so Ozzy's vocals don't scare me.

If anything I'm worried about the choice of drummer but even that's passable. I think Sabbath has been apart so long that each member who came back was able to bring enough to the table that a good album is possible. I for one can't wait for June.

I'm kinda surprised how well the users of Blabbermouth have taken the news about the drummer on the record. That site is schizophrenic for sure (probably the wrong word, but it'll fit for now).

This guy right here. More than likely, it'll return to the sound of Ozzy-era Sabbath, which I've always preferred to the Dio-era stuff - not saying the Dio stuff is anything short of pants-shittingly amazing, but I really, really love the Ozzy stuff. A lot.

An album title like "13" leads me to think that this whole thing will have been written by a team of lawyers and marketing executives.

Two bonus tracks on the Reunion live album. Nothing mind blowing, but I'm quite partial to "Psycho Man" myself. It's got "MOTHERFUCKING IOMMI RIFF RIGHT HERE" written all over it. Well, some of it at least.

Incidentally, the way they butchered the video from those shows is beyond my comprehension. They called the DVD "The Last Supper", and interrupted the live performance with interviews during the songs.

Tony Iommi is the only reason I'll be listening....

This. All of this.

I trust that Ozzy will suck beyond comprehension though.

Ozzy can still sing a good enough vocal hook. His voice is pretty awful nowadays, but as long as they write some catchy, primarily rock/metal vocal lines, it should be OK.

Fixed.

I have the last supper. It's an interesting DVD. I think the problem with it is its billed as a concert DVD when it should be billed as a documentary the way they cut the interviews into the songs. Most of the times it's survivable though....most of the time...