Best 80S-90S non-Ozzy, non-Dio Sabbath album besides "Born Again"

Cafe Society
1

. . . . “Born Again” being a brilliant and frightening one-off shot with Ian Gillan that deserves a place with the Dio and Ozzy efforts.

BTW, this is NOT a hate debate about how much Black Sabbath sucked without Ozzy or Dio; I’m asking fans to rank their efforts without them. While with a few Geezer Butler contributions, most of these were “Tony Iommi Band” and not Black Sabbath efforts, I think Tony Martin was a highly underrated vocalist and these albums contained a lot of great metal tunes. Keep in mind Bob Daisley, Cozy Powell, Neil Murray and many respected metallers were part of these albums.

Here’s my ranking:

HEADLESS CROSS (Tony Martin) Darkest quasi-Sab piece. The title track will put chills down your spine, and Martin never sounded better. This was one of the first IRS Records signings, and Iommi’s guitar with Cozy Powell’s drumming shakes the stereos. Not one bad track from top to bottom. Even fans who wont accept Sab sand Oz, Dio or Ian should give this a listen; its the only one on this list that deserves consideration with albums released by them. *****

CROSS PURPOSES (Tony Martin) Very, very heavy early 90s effort after Dio left for a second time. “Dying for Love” is a very underrated ballad, but the album kinda loses interest after that. My understanding is this album was written for Dio, but Tony Martin fills the shoes very well. ***

SEVENTH STAR (Glenn Hughes) The first of the Iommi “solo” Sabbath albums. Sounds nothing like any Sabbath album; a great poppy metal album if you just close your eyes and pretend its a Iommi-Hughes effort, and not really Black Sabbath. ***

TYR (Tony Martin) Ugh, Concept album. Except “Anno Mundi” and “Jerusalem” are among the top songs of this era of Black Sabbath. ** 1/2

ETERNAL IDOL (Tony Martin) “The Shining” is a great opener, but the rest of this followup to Seventh Star still sounds like Tony Iommi doing a solo album trying to cash in on the Sabbath name. Fun trivia: online you can find a version with the late Ray Gillen of Badlands on vocals! **

FORBIDDEN (Tony Martin) Features a rap song–nuff said. It was a good thing the original lineup started performing together soon after this was released. Sorry, Tony, both of you. *

2

I came into the thread to say I applaud the effort, but can offer no input. Never that big of a Sabbath head. But I appreciate the type of discussion you are trying to have.

3

Cross Purposes gets my vote. Having Geezer Butler writing makes the difference. Sounds more Sabbathy.

4

When it first came out I was a big fan of Eternal Idol. The last time I listened to it, it had a dated kind of sound. I should give it another listen.

5

Tony Martin actually wrote most of the lyrics on that one, he said he tried to involve Geezer more but that Geezer just wasn’t that interested. Geezer said he wanted to concentrate on the music side of things and that Martin was writing good lyrics without needing much help.

My pick is Eternal Idol, very underrated album. It doesn’t sound like old Black Sabbath at all, but it’s heavier and sounds more focused than Seventh Star (ironically enough because the band lineup was in complete disarray during the sessions).