Home Featured BLACK SABBATH’s TONY IOMMI Plans To Remix The Band’s ‘Born Again’ Album

BLACK SABBATH’s TONY IOMMI Plans To Remix The Band’s ‘Born Again’ Album

black sabbath born again, BLACK SABBATH’s TONY IOMMI Plans To Remix The Band’s ‘Born Again’ Album

BLACK SABBATH guitarist Tony Iommi says that he still wants to remix the iconic band’s  “Born Again” album.

Released in the summer of 1983, “Born Again” was the only BLACK SABBATH album to feature DEEP PURPLE singer Ian Gillan. It would also mark drummer Bill Ward’s last outing with the band on a record.

Speaking with SiriusXM’s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk”, Iommi confirmed that the master tapes for “Born Again” had been located and that he is planning on getting the record “sounding right” prior to releasing it to the public.

“Apparently, [my manager] found a connection there, where [the master tapes] were,” Tony said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). “I haven’t heard any more. We’re waiting to get these now. They discovered where they were — in some library in some record company somewhere. Obviously, I’d love to do that — I’d love to get that one sounding right. ‘Cause I think that was a really good album. And when we’d first done it in the studio, it sounded great. But when it came out on record, it was really muffly and not good. So I wanna try and do something with that.”

Following the departure of lead singer Ronnie James Dio and drummer Vinny Appice after the studio mixing of the “Live Evil” album, BLACK SABBATH was once again on the lookout for yet another lead vocalist to fill the significant void left at stage front. The band turned to Ian Gillan.

The resultant album and live touring certainly made for one of the more curious associations in the world of heavy metal. Much of this era of BLACK SABBATH has passed into rock folklore and was actually the source for the material used in the rockumentary movie “This Is Spinal Tap”. From the replica stage production of Stonehenge, which was too large for some of the venues on the world tour, to the employment of a dwarf to dress up and play the part of the “devil-baby” from the LP front cover, the world of BLACK SABBATH took on a distinct air of the surreal.

While the well-received “Born Again” album and live dates succeeded in stoking the embers and kept the SABBATH flames burning, this would ultimately be a marriage built more on friendship and respect as opposed to any long-standing and compatible musical association. After one tour, Ian Gillan would eventually bid farewell and re-join his old sparring partners for the Mk. II reunion of DEEP PURPLE and leave BLACK SABBATH once more gazing into the crystal ball hoping the face of yet another lead vocalist would reveal itself.

For Iommi, Geezer Butler, Ward, Gillan, and keyboardist Geoff Nicholls, work would swiftly commence in May of ’83 at the Manor Studios in the village of Shiptonon-Cherwell, Oxfordshire. Produced by BLACK SABBATH and co-producer Robin Black, who had also worked on 1975’s “Sabotage”, 1976’s “Technical Ecstasy”, and 1978’s “Never Say Die”, SABBATH’s eleventh studio release would represent a radical departure from the gloomy atmospherics and blackened lyricism that had forged their identity and spawned innumerable descendants.

Gillan’s approach to songwriting bespoke a lighter-hearted approach to what had, until then, been the primary concern of Butler. Album opener “Trashed”, for instance, was inspired by Gillan’s boozed-up race around the Manor’s grounds in Bill Ward’s car that ended in near-catastrophe and a wrecked vehicle. “Disturbing The Priest” was the result of a door in the studio having been left open during playback, and a local vicar appearing in the doorway asking for the volume to be turned down as it was disturbing choir practice in the adjacent village.

For all of its off-kilter appearance however, “Born Again” was still SABBATH through and through. Musically twisted and possessed with more than a whiff of brimstone, the album is a thrilling glimpse into an alternative world.