Black Sabbath was fronted by vocalist Tony Martin for the majority of years between 1987 and 1997. None of those albums are available on streaming services, and hunting down physical copies is a pain in the ass. Last we heard, the Martin era of Black Sabbath would be reissued this year, but that was in December 2022.
So what's going on? According to Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi in an interview with Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk, it's still happening! There are just other reissues Black Sabbath has to get through first.
"Yeah, there'll be stuff coming," said Iommi as transcribed by Blabbermouth. "If I say something, people expect it there and then. But you can't do it that quick. You have to go through the routine of, like, now we're on the Dio package, and then it'll move on and move on. The idea is, yes, the Tony Martin stuff will be coming out. And I'm looking forward to that as well, 'cause there's a lot of great stuff on there that got overlooked and that people wouldn't know of and didn't even know that there was an album out with Tony Martin, a lot of people, and it'd be nice to be able to show that again."
Martin previously weighed in on the potential reissues back in July 2022, saying he doesn't really know what's going on.
"I don't know. As always with Black Sabbath, you don't get a lot of information, to be honest; they keep things close to their chest. They don't sort of say anything, especially if you're in the band — they don't tell you anything if you're in the band. All I know is that it's happening."
"I know that two record labels are releasing it. I don't know when, and I don't know what it's gonna look like. There was some suggestion a while back that we might be able to put extra tracks and stuff on it. I did offer, and I went to see Tony Iommi and offered some things. And then he said we can't use anything new 'cause nothing new can be released under the Black Sabbath name. It can only be stuff that's got the original four members on it. I'm expecting it to be a remixed version of whatever the original was; that's what I'm expecting. So I await as you do to find out. Let me know if you hear it first."
Martin also said he hoped Black Sabbath's jam sessions with Eddie Van Halen for the 1994 Cross Purposes album would surface in the box set: "I recorded the writing session with… Eddie Van Halen came over and helped us write one of the tracks [for Cross Purposes]. And I had an eight-track recorder at the time in the 1980s, and I used to take it everywhere, this thing. I've got all of the writing sessions and rehearsals recorded. So I sent [Iommi] this, and he went, 'Wow! That's fucking great.' And I said, 'Well, you're welcome to use it, if you wanna put that on.' So, I don't know… Maybe you'll get that on there."
