Seventh Star

‘Seventh Star’ is an album with a bit of a strange reputation, not in the least part because it was originally conceived as a solo album for guitarist Tony Iommi rather than a Black Sabbath album. However, I do think the album laid the groundwork for the way Black Sabbath would sound for the rest of the eighties. To be fair, Iommi might not have credited those albums to Sabbath either if it wasn’t for record label pressures. No matter the names on the front cover though, the melodic eighties hardrock meets traditional heavy metal sound of ‘Seventh Star’ and its follow-ups just works.

A source of ridicule at the time was the fact that ‘Seventh Star’ was the second album in a row Iommi recorded with a former Deep Purple singer. But where Ian Gillan often sounded out of place on the occasionally good, but very uneven ‘Born Again’, Glenn Hughes is the perfect singer for ‘Seventh Star’. Hughes was at the height of his cocaine addiction issues at the time – there is a reason why he barely released anything in the eighties – but even without that caveat, he sounds incredible on these songs and it’s hard to imagine anyone else singing them.

The album’s lack of popularity might be easy to understand given the band name on the cover. In fact, the only song on ‘Seventh Star’ that sounds like it could have been on anything with Ozzy or Dio singing is the incredible title track. The monumental, rather slow main riff is prime Iommi, though the keyboards, melodic touches and overall production make it distinctly mid-eighties. ‘Seventh Star’ has some excellent metal tracks though. Especially the borderline speed metal of ‘Turn to Stone’ – that main riff just rips – and opener ‘In for the Kill’ account for some of the greatest moments here.

Elsewhere, ‘Seventh Star’ is a clear product of its time and that often works well. ‘Danger Zone’ translates Iommi’s riffs to AOR with a fantastic vocal performance by Hughes, as does the vaguely Deep Purple-esque ‘Angry Heart’. ‘No Stranger to Love’ feels a bit awkward, especially given its very early placement on the tracklisting, but is a pleasant enough semi-ballad, though the much darker and intense ‘In Memory…’ is the vastly superior ballad here. I have to be in the mood for the blues pushed through a mid-eighties rock filter that is ‘Heart Like a Wheel’, but even that track is interesting.

Discussions whether or not ‘Seventh Star’ should be seen as a Black Sabbath album are valid, but whether or not this is a good album is a completely different story. It sets out to be a good melodic hardrock album and it largely succeeds at that. Ironically, ‘Fused’, the incredible album Hughes and Iommi released in 2005, sounds more traditionally Black Sabbath than this. It’s unfortunate that their original partnership fell apart so shortly after the release of ‘Seventh Star’, because it would have been interesting to hear what else they could have come up with.

Recommended tracks: ‘Seventh Star’, ‘Turn to Stone’, ‘In Memory…’, ‘In for the Kill’

Originally written for my Kevy Metal blog