BLACK SABBATH DISCOGRAPHY RANKING GAME: #11 REVEALED

Diesel 11 said:
I think Tyr starts the "good" run of Sabbath albums. There's a 32 point difference between it and Born Again. I like Eternal Idol my fair share but I feel like Sabbath hasn't fully found their identity again. The riffs are better, the songs are better, but Tony Martin isn't fully a part of the band. The fact that he just re-did Ray Gillen's vocal lines to me is really stark. It seems like half the people who like this album argue that Gillen's original takes were better. I have no big opinions but to me it is completely night and day. This is a Tony Iommi project; Headless Cross and Tyr are real band albums.

"The Shining" and "Ancient Warrior" are great, great songs. "Eternal Idol" is pretty unique in the discography. A lot of these songs in the middle are good, but I don't see all that much identity here, and they're certainly not better than "Anno Mundi", "Jerusalem", "The Sabbath Stones", "Valhalla", anything on Headless Cross.

With all that said, I'm kind of surprised that I was one of the highest raters but I think I rate all of Martin's material higher in general. It's definitely a great album in its own right but I'll step up to bat for the next two because I really think Sabbath captured something special they immediately lost when Dio returned for Dehumanizer. Which is also a good album, but I digress.
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Point taken, the jump starts at Tyr in terms of vote totals. That this starts the run of good Sabbath is entirely my own opinion on the albums so far.

I am agnostic on Gillen vs Martin, although I do feel strongly that Iommi IS Sabbath and won’t quibble too much about what is a band project beyond that. I do agree though that Headless Cross and Tyr are a return to working as a cohesive unite that we hadn’t seen since Mob Rules.
 
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11: The Devil You Know
12: The Eternal Idol
13: Tyr
14: Born Again
15: Technical Ecstasy
16: Seventh Star
17: Cross Purposes (tie)
17: Thirteen (tie)
18: Never Say Die!
19: Forbidden

Total points: 160

highest score: 19 (@Night Prowler)
lowest score: 3 (@The_7th_one)

And Dio finally enters the game at #11! Probably unsurprisingly, the Dio era was generally popular around here and very few lists ranked any of these albums low, hence the worst performing Dio album still being just outside the top 10.

Devil You Know is an interesting album to me, it kinda feels like the inverse of 13 in the sense that 13 has a very strong 1-2 punch but then falls apart pretty quickly after while Devil has a very weak 1-2 punch but picks up big time with Bible Black and doesn't let up until the end. The title is fitting as well as there is nothing particularly challenging or unusual about this album. The riffs are there, Dio sounds fantastic, and there are some really solid hooks. It's just a very enjoyable listen that is true to the Sabbath sound. On the other hand, this album lacks a Children of the Sea or Sign of the Southern Cross to truly elevate it to the heights of the 80s Dio era. It can feel a little generic, which is true of the previous album on the list, The Eternal Idol. However, The Eternal Idol doesn't have Dio, and I think at least some of the 27 extra points that Devil gained is due to this simple fact. The relentless heaviness is great too.

The biggest point of interest for me is how much this album wiped the floor with Thirteen. Almost a 100 point difference! It's impossible not to compare the Dio reunion album with the Ozzy reunion album, and it seems most people agree that the Dio album was far more successful. I think 13 sounds a little bit more like you would expect an Ozzy Sabbath to sound, but Devil You Know has a little bit more authenticity and actually feels like an evolution instead of the band searching for something they achieved in the past.
 
The Devil You Know is an amazing swan song for both Dio and Dio Sabbath. It’s a crushing, relentlessly dark album that gets better for me on every listen.

Bible Black is a top tier classic and there’s a few other tracks that get close to it. I do agree that the sequencing could have been better, though.

TDYK sounds inspired. It sounds like an album that wanted to be made, instead of 13: an album that had to be made.
 
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