Cheap Never Say Die (Music) (Black Sabbath) Price

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Customer Reviews of Never Say Die

Ozzy's swan song with Sabbath
Black Sabbath's eighth album Never Say Die was released in October of 1978. The album was self-produced by the band and recorded in Toronto, Canada to escape England's awful tax law. Before the album was made, Ozzy Osbourne briefly left the band and was replaced by Dave Walker of Savoy Brown. Geezer Butler also quit as well but was back in no time with Ozzy to join guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward to record the original lineup's farewell album Never Say Die. When it was released, the album was the first Sabbath album to flop here in the States, it would eventually go Gold in later years. The cover had another classic Hipgnosis cover and is surprisingly a great album. I first got this CD in May of 1995 and loved it immediately. The album kicks off with the hit single which was the album's title cut which was one of Sabbath's best songs. The next track Johnny Blade is a cool song with wild synths from Don Airey and a great metal rocker. Junior's Eyes follows and is one of my favorite songs on the album and was about the death of Ozzy's father The first half closed with A Hard Road which was another great song on the album. The first half is a great half. The second half kicked off with Shock Wave which had one of the coolest guitar intros I've ever heard and is a great song as well. The weird but killer Air Dance follows. Over To You follows and was Ozzy's final vocal on a Sabbath track until 1998's Reunion studio track Psycho Man. The instrumental Breakout is a great jazzy tune with some weird sax. The closing track Swinging the Chain had drummer Bill Ward singing on this song and doing a great job and had killer harmonica work by Ozzy. As everyone knows, Ozzy got canned in January of 1979 after the tour in support of this album was finished. This album is highly recommended!

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Never Say Buy
Anyone out there who is planning to buy their first Black Sabbath album, beware: this shouldn't be it. While Never Say Die is interesting to hard core Black Sabbath fans, it is not atypical of Sabbath music.

The slow, crushing, mammoth Black Sabbath riffs we are all used to are entirely absent here. Instead, Iommi and company experiment, with mixed results. The first three songs are the best this album has to offer. "Never Say Die" sounds like the music Ozzy would eventually do on his solo albums, and "Johnny Blade" is just an all out rocker that sounds like it could have been on Vol. 4. "Junior's Eyes" seems to have lyrics inspired by the death of Ozzy's father, which had a profound effect on him and led to his quitting Sabbath for a brief period before returning to record this album. These three songs alone make Never Say Die worthwhile.

Many of the other songs aren't quite as successful. "Air Dance" is a unique Sabbath tune; there are no others like it on any other album. Even so, it isn't really all that memorable of a song on its own merits. "Breakout" is a jazz-influenced instrumental with saxophones and horns that is quite nice, but doesn't belong on a Sabbath album. Bill Ward's vocals on "Swinging the Chain" are awful; there is no polite way to describe it. That's a shame, because that may have been one of this album's stronger tracks if Ozzy had done the vocals. The rest of Never Say Die is rounded out with songs that are entirely forgettable filler tracks.

If you already have all of Black Sabbath's other albums, you may want this to fill out your collection and see where the roots of Ozzy's solo career originate. Otherwise, go get Master of Reality or Paranoid, the all-time classic Sabbath albums.

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Return To Glory
Ah Never Say Die. Most fans despise it. Personally I love it. As an album, it shows a band moving in new directions. It really moved me unlike their previous two efforts Sabotage and Technical Ecstasy which had their moments of genius but were bogged down by some horrible material. Now onto Never Say Die.

This album shows Sabbath stretching and changing, playing different forms of music better than Ecstasy. The album starts off with an excellent punk rock esque rocker, the title track Never Say Die. It moves and shows a band full of optimism in full form. I really wish they still played this song live. Next you are hit with the synth intro to Johnny Blade. The song is a hardcore rocker that clocks in at around seven minutes and basically turns into a guitar solo jam. Out of nowhere you are then hit by the old school blues bass line of Junior's Eyes, a song about Ozzys father which is simply old fashioned blues. Then the hippiness of A Hard Road hits. It is a totally optimistic hippie esque song that has the famous line "why take the hard road/Why can't we be friends/No need to worry/We'll meet in the end" which is the story of the band at this time in a nutshell. then comes shock wave, another rocker which is followed by the curve ball that is Air Dance. The song with its jazz influences ever present is a generally good song that I get a kick out of when making friends listen to it because no one believes its black sabbath until i take the cd out and have them see the disc. Anyway, this is followed by Over to You, another rocker (sensing a pattern) This is followed by the instrumental Breakout which is filled with horns (a black sabbath oddity again) which serves as the intro to the Bill Ward sung Swinging The Chain. This song ends the album on a good bluesy note as well as does a great job of sealing the end of the ozzy era. It was sad to see the original lineup go but at least they left us with this hastily put together masterpiece. Five stars. Go out and buy this as well as all the sabbath albums before this and anything from the Ronnie James Dio era. Peace.