Rolling Stone apparently cares about music again! They posted a very in-depth article on the upcoming Black Sabbath album, 13 and it features new tidbits of interest from the recording of the new record:
Last week, Geezer Butler revealed that the band is in the mixing stage of the album, and it's looking like 13 will be released in June. We also learned that they have enlisted Rage Against The Machine drummer Brad Wilk to help with studio sessions.
In the Rolling Stone article, we get our first taste of song titles, including "End of the Beginning" and "Age of Reason," which RS says stretch as long as 8 minutes. "God Is Dead" is another songtitle, but it's not as grim as the Slayer version, with Ozzy being quoted as saying:
"It starts off, 'God is dead,'" Osbourne says, before adding a bit wistfully, "but at the end it says, 'I don't believe that God is dead.'"
Overall, Ozzy compares the musical stylings to "satanic blues" moreso than to what has become known as heavy metal with Ozzy adding "We just do what we always did."
And really, that's all I need to hear. What's also promising is this quote from the album's producer, Rick Rubin:
Sitting the band down in his Los Angeles home, [Rick Rubin] played them their first album, 1970's brutally primitive Black Sabbath. "I wanted to make an album that stood alongside their first four albums," Rubin says. "The first album wasn't a straightforward heavy metal record. You could hear the jazz influence, so that was the goal, and to capture that live interaction."
Overall, the entire article is worth a read, including an interesting anecdote from Tony Iommi about how the foursome originally wanted to record a new album 12 years ago, but the launch of The Osbournes reality series completely derailed the album.
I'm getting more and more excited for June to hear this album, how about you?
