Combing Sabbaths Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die.

If Sabbath never released these albums but instead released one with the best of these two would the history of Sabbath been different? Would Ozzy have been fired since sales and reviews would of been better and ticket sales perhaps would of been better thus a reason to keep the original band together?

I would of preferred an album with the following songs.

1. Back Street Kids.
2. Gypsy.
3. Dirty Women.
4. Never Say Die.
5. Johnny Blade
6. Juniors Eyes.
7. Air Dance.

 

... No “Shockwave?” Huh.

 

I don’t think that would have helped.

 

I think they're both fine how they are (minus "Breakout"), and we got 2 fantastic albums with Dio at the helm for Sabbath and Ozzy's solo(-ish) career out of it.

 

Both have aged well and def keepers in ye olde analog era LP collection.

 

Once you've listened to their later 80's output, both of those albums hold up surprising well. Terrible album artwork for both though.

 

Ozzy was still a mess. Probably would have ended with him anyway.

 

I like the disturbingly cold and surreal art-deco nightmare that is the album artwork (even the typesetting) for Technical Ecstasy.

 

Apparently the two figures are supposed to be having sex. Fair enough.

 

I've heard that before but I don't view it that way (too conceptually banal and not very interesting, though I can certainly understand that concept, if intended, which I guess it probably is, especially given the title.) I see it as more of a moment of brief attack or some other unclearly defined interchange. This is one of my favorite album covers of all time.

 

That's cool. People always think I'm insane when I say that I like the cover to Born Again by Sabbath. I really do though. It's garish and ugly, but it just has something about it that I like.

 

The cover to Born Again is one of the greatest album covers of all time. Absolutely brilliant. Anyone who claims to like Black Sabbath who also says that that album's cover is anything less than superb is either a fake, a pod person or just a general schlub with very poor and questionable aesthetic sensibilities.

 

Or Ian Gillan

 

I'd always read & been told that Technical Ecstasy was really poor so I stopped at Sabotage.

I took the plunge with it earlier this year & have to say I'm massively surprised at how good it is, I even like Bill Ward's song. It definitely belongs along with the great Ozzy Black Sabbath albums in my opinion.

I'll need to check out Never Say Die at some point.

 

How does leaving off the best song from Technical Ecstasy (You Won't Change Me) make this a better album?

 

I think everyone is missing the obvious question. shouldn't we be using a brush, not a comb?

 

TE is a decent album. Fans tend to dismiss it due to increased presence of keyboards as well as the songs being more melodic. Regarding Ozzy, he probably would have left/ been fired anyway. He had been looking to get out as early as 1976 and had briefly quit the band in late 1977 to form an early version of Blizzard of Ozz. He only rejoined Sabbath because his new band didn't pan out.

 

And Bill wasn't any better. He claims to have no recollection of recording Heaven and Hell.

 

It sucks, but I find it amusing in it's over the topness. Eternal Idol has the best cover, IMO.

 

Sabbath should have packed it in after Sabotage. Those last two albums are an insult to what they'd been building over the first six.

 

Both of these albums are solid gold enjoyable to me

 

I like them both, and to me, they each have a different enough feel that there's no way you can combine songs from one with songs from the other. I like this quote too:

Never Say Die is one of my favorites by them. *Not* overplayed Paranoid, for example.

 

"Back Street Kids"
"You Won't Change Me"
"Gypsy"
"All Moving Parts (Stand Still)"
"Dirty Women"

"Never Say Die"
"Hard Road"
"Air Dance"
"Over to You"

 

I don't understand why anybody would want to pull apart a masterpiece like Never Say Die!