The Mob Rules (Black Sabbath, 1981)

Since the previously reviewed Dio Years compilation omitted about half of this album, it was refreshing to give the whole album a run-through this morning. This is the band's tenth album, and the first one to not feature Bill Ward on drums (in fact, he would only appear on one more "official" release) and also the first to reduce original band membership to 50%. With the previous album, Heaven and Hell, the band sans Ozzy joined forces with Ronnie James Dio, recently parted from Rainbow, and reinvented themselves as a power metal band.

Mob Rules has a slightly grainier production than its predecessor, but in many ways is a reflection. Both albums start with a rousing fist-pumping song and end with a slow song. Each one tucks the title track at the end of the first half of the album, a half that also includes a longer, more complex work. Generally in head-to-head match-ups the songs on this album fall just a little short of those on the previous album (e.g. "Sign of the Southern Cross" is not quite "Children of the Sea"). On the other hand, Mob Rules displays a little more fire in the solos (see "Turn Up the Night" and "Slipping Away", the latter of which lets Geezer loose) and employs segues from "Sign of the Southern Cross" to songlet "E5150" to the title track. I always felt that Heaven and Hell could have used a better segue between its first two songs.

The band famously ripped right down the middle during a dust-up in the creation of Live Evil, the live album that followed this album's release. The aftermath resulted in some earth-shaking developments in the world of metal, with the creation of Dio (the band), by Dio and drummer Vinny Appice, matched by the surprise enlistment of Ian Gillan on vocals and the return of Bill Ward to the drumkit. While Dio would smash through the 1980's with four albums and only one small lineup hiccup, Black Sabbath would collapse in the wake of 1983's Born Again, only to be resurrected mid-decade with a completely new group of musicians built around mainstay Tony Iommi (see Seventh Star for that debacle).