Anybody here like 'Technical Ecstasy'?

My bad; I totally forgot about SBS in my head - ALL of the Ozzy-era Sabbath albums are as essential as the first SIX

 

I like it. It would be second tier Sabbath with Never Say Die and Mob Rules.

 

It's not a bad album at all, it's just an uneven album.
Very good songs like All Moving Parts, Rock And Roll Doctor,You Won't Change Me,Gypsy, Backstreet Kids.
But then you have in my opinion a couple of duds in She's gone and It's alright.
Still it's Sabbath and a must have for any real Sabbath fan.
Sabbath poser fans - you don't need it, stick to Paranoid.

 

It's one of my all time favorite albums. If I had a top 100 albums list, this would be on it. It, along with NSD are phenomenal albums that have only gotten better with time.

 

They had raised the bar so high, it was getting harder and harder for them to keep raising it......They had internal issues, and it was heading into the disco era, so rock was falling out of favor....It got a bad rap....Maybe it isn't their best effort, but it still beats 95% of the other rock that was out at the time...Just my opinion, but I think rock got kind of stale, in the later 70's.....a lot of the great bands had spent them selves....zep, purple, who, heep, Sabbath...on and on.....it was a era that was coming to a close..But Tech est. has some great stuff on it.....I like it. 4 and 5 and 6 are my faves, but Tech is also worth owning and playing.

 

Actually, Deep Purple broke up in 1976, before it "got stale"....while the other bands had to deal with the fallout from Saturday Night Fever and the Sex Pistols.

 

I know

 

I love the monster, and I mean MONSTER riff that Tony plays half way into the song "Dirty Women". That's about it for me.

3:26 into this video :

 

I had all the Black Sabbath Mk I LP's- Tech. Ec. is not a bad album- underrated. It's better than Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Never Say Die IMHO.
but let's face it, in the shadow of Sabbath 1st LP, Paranoid, and Master of Reality- it sort of got thrown on back burner for life.
Vol. IV ain't that good actually...all the songs sound the same.
debut and Master of Reality are the 2 best IMHO.

 

I 'like' TE, as the title asks. It is in my collection and will always be.

But it sounds more like "Tony's Agony" than a Technical Ecstasy.

There is no Sabbath group effort on this one.

Thumbs up for the effort, but a 'fail' in the Sabbath song book, imho.

 

I like a couple tracks like You Won't Change Me, Dirty Women, It's Alright,
and somewhat Backstreet Kid.

 

It's OK. I had the 8-track when it was new, it got a lot of play in the car. Never bought the LP or CD.

 

If you don't like Technical Ecstasy you are not a Black Sabbath OG.

 

Just picking a few examples and maybe I can see what you mean....

Tomorrow's Dream
Changes
Supernaut
Laguna Sunrise

Wait. Do we have different versions of Vol. 4?

 

I do know I listen to this more

Actually starts a little earlier with Gezzer, but yes, a great riff. I equally love Iommi's melodic playing underneath the closing verse and solo. It gets a little lost in the recording, but it shines in the 1978 Never Say Day concert film. Same is true for the ending to "Looking For Today". Brilliant.

 

Dont like

First 2 rock

second 2 rock less

next 2 rock somewhat

next 2 bleh

 

Nothing second tier about Mob Rules in my ears.

 

Mob Rules is second tier? Not....

Mob rules 2nd tier? Maybe not up to Heaven and.....and no Bill Ward...but still a damn good effort...Dio and Iommi do some good things...Nice solo on Voodoo.

 

Nothing wrong with Tech E....

 

I'll say this about TE.

I think it was a genuinely interesting effort. They clearly were looking to make sure they weren't written off as a result of beating some perceived "dead horse." The songs are seriously well-crafted as always, it's just that the songcraft was maybe a little bit more mainstream than people were used to with Sabbath. It's ironic that in going a bit more commercial, the sales in the US weren't that hot (by Sabbath standards). In the UK the album did pretty much as great as always. I may be wrong in this perception but I get the feeling that in England the album was really regarded as quite an amazing achievement. It's a difficult task to change your sound this much but retain what made you great. In the US, maybe the general feeling was that this was great music but not great Sabbath music?

From a historical perspective, I find the album quite fascinating. Not sure how many heavy rock bands have ever been capable of writing a song like "She's Gone". A song that also ends up a mega smash hit when covered by a Czech pop singer? To me, that ballad is so completely different. It almost transcends the medium because Ozzy's voice is just SOOOO damned unique. The acoustic guitar work is just beautiful, the string arrangements hauntingly sad. It is really quite a song and dare I say had Elton John come up with it that it would have been a #1 hit. But people want certain things out of Sabbath because their core sound is just so different that it scratches a certain itch that people can't reach with other bands, so when they don't scratch that itch I guess some people are somewhat closed-minded about it.

Lyrically, Geezer just cracks me up on this album. It's like he's decided he has to come up with some less "heavy" stuff and be a bit more mainstream, but he can't help himself. "All Moving Parts" ends up being a song about a female transvestite who has the country fooled into thinking she's a man and she becomes President. This is NOT your standard stuff. Even "Dirty Women" is deceptive in that the title APPEARS to indicate that they are going to start writing about the more common rock topics of the era, but it really ends up being about the anti-rock star. The loneliness on the road and the desperation as opposed to the "I can have groupies all day and night" machismo one might expect from someone in that position.

As far as Iommi, this album blew my guitar playing mind. His solos are out of this world. The stuff on "You Won't Change Me" is some of the best improvising I've ever heard.

I guess I give it maybe 3/5 stars.

 

Agreed, Tim. Commercial? Well, yes in a way, but still weird, especially Geezer's All Moving Parts lyrics. The weird got dialed way up on never Say Die, and I like that one too.

I just think Tony and Geezer in particular are able to do a lot of great things, not just the sludgy material that some people expect on every song. This band has always been more diverse than given credit for.

Then again, I liked every Sabbath record to some extent, even Forbidden.

 

I think it's a pretty typical '70s hard rock effort. I like it, but it just doesn't stack up to the first six Sab albums. Not even close. The music and lyrics had gotten increasingly mature and evolved with each record through Sabotage. I don't think it's a coincidence that the last song on Sabotage, The Writ, lays down the law against the record label's A&R man working with Sab. Undoubtedly they were under tremendous pressure by the label to produce catchier pop hits with instrumentation like synthesizers that was mostly out of their comfort zone.