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.
