Tony Iommi – 'From the Dark' review: classic heavy metal writ large
The Black Sabbath guitarist's solo album is out on Friday via BMG. The Arts Desk awards it four stars; on Metacritic it currently scores 68.
Photo: Shane Hirschman / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped and resized)
Single video: YouTube · Tony Iommi · youtube.com
Single: Stormwatcher
Tony Iommi releases his solo album 'From the Dark' on BMG on 23 October. On vocals is Norwegian singer Jorn Lande, who co-wrote every song; Becky Baldwin plays bass and Karl Brazil drums. Iommi produced the record with Mike Exeter. The standard edition has eight tracks, the deluxe CD two more. "We're not trying to prove anything – it's a great album, it rocks!" Iommi said when the album was announced.
At The Arts Desk, Guy Oddy calls it a classic old-school heavy metal album that makes no excursions into other genres and recalls Black Sabbath's early-1980s era with Ronnie James Dio. The production is clean but not too polished, he writes, concluding that Iommi's vision makes for "a seriously powerful set of tunes" that will keep plenty of metalheads more than happy. Highlights include 'Over the Violent Sun', 'Stormwatcher' and 'Legacy'. On Metacritic the album currently scores 68 out of 100.
The most recent advance single, 'Stormwatcher', arrived in early October with an animated video; the song follows a ship caught in a storm. "We are the captain of our own vessel," Lande says of the track. The first single, 'World Alone', was unveiled in July at a streaming event in Birmingham.