Review: Black Sabbath 'Technical Ecstasy-Super Deluxe' 

Doobie 75 - with the exception of, "all moving parts." You have highlighted the album. Three songs kinda' detract from the album; very good/underrated album nonetheless...

Ooh yesss! "You won't change me" is absolutely brilliant and epic! Dare to say my fave Sabbath song😮😍😍🤗👍👍

Nothing wrong with the album at all. It just was a little different due to "It's Alright" - every other song is 'typical' Sabbath and the whole album is very good. This album is like a TEMPLE compared to the post-Gillan/pre-reunion years records. Those were all pretty mediocre.

And the machines having sex on the escalator on the front cover is fantastic graphics and then on the back they maybe should have had one having a cigarette! Lol 😊

It's mediocre and mainstream pop. Sabbath was on a downward spiral until Dio.

We lived a parallel life. 👍

Same story 😮

Thanks. I was wondering who was on keys and couldn't find any info on wiki or discogs. Great performance here!

Yes, and probably doesn’t even like it🤣

🤣

@@zoef234 LOL.....indeed. His entire life is defined by what he hates/dislike, as opposed to what he enjoys. strange dude.

He’s got more money than me.

One to listen to, one to keep and another one just in case!

Dereksupernaut -supernaut, ain't to shabby neither...faxually speaking!

well, now, i'll agree that it's great, but i think you're forgettin' somethin', there, bucko: but it's alright, i'll, uh, let-it-slide this time~

'it's alright', in my opinion, is as-good-as-it-gets, as long as ozzy's not available, that is! haha!!

🤣

When I saw him the opening band was Slade

wow, boomer, you actually look old enough for that to be true, yet i still don't believe ya, man! but that's okay, i'm just kiddin' anyway and it probly doesn't matter what you say but be careful: you could be betray'd by anything-you-do-say, haha!

Yeah, that's my complaint, too. I do understand if there's not enough material for the debut. But "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" and "Master of Reality" should have some and really need to get the Super Deluxe Treatment.

I agree mate. Lot of $ for a live album. The original album is great as it is. That’s why it’s a classic.

Totally agree with you. It'll only collect dust on the shelf, no matter how much we want it. Too pricey.

they were my alltime favorite even in 1975 when i was ten, man, and still are up til this very year, well there's maybe a few others to be fair, but there's a lotta great bands/various artists out there, yeah?

The vinyl box set is a steal at $ 110 U.S. 5LPs, great hardcover book, poster, tour book, and the new remix is great. And the live tracks help fill in the gaps in Sabbath live history.

@@vinylsolution2522 btw, $140 in Europe.

Haha! Too many times John...I had the LP, the original CD, 2 rounds of remasters, and now the box set. Five times...ugh. THE CURSE IS REAL

I'm totally curse free, especially when it comes to Steven Wilson remixes! Now when it comes to the Red Sox that's another story...😎

I bet he hasn't bought as many versions as Chris Alo!

@@wolf1977 As a Sox fan myself, the curse is long dead and buried.

@@manuelper It is now, I was speaking historically. After all, I'm the one who in '86 was watching the Series with friends & I actually said this in the top of the tenth when they took a two-run lead: "This game is over". One of my friends never forgave me & blamed me for costing the Sox the pennant. However I still don't hate Bill Buckner (or reliever Calvin Schiraldi) - just as I don't blame any of the panelists for owning 10 remixed copies as part of this particular CURSE (as long as it's not me)

Dream on. It’s not coming out anytime soon. According to the latest interview with Iommi. I just don’t think that there’s enough record company interest at this point. But I’m like you and many other fans... it would be a dream to hear it cleaned up.

It's a cult classic Bill Ward loves the production on Born Again.

well, son, i have to say it was a fine choice but you might be fairly young! surely you're now aware of few older, if-not-better ones.. yes-yes?

@@tinfoilhatter nope , plenty old and a huge Sabbath fan. Several albums that are better but I like this album because it’s different . The trio of this , Sabotage and Bloody Sabbath are my Faves but I would Say Paranoid and Masters are there best ( Ozzy period ) but I would put Heaven and Hell above all of themAs I said, it was my first Sabbath album . This album is a preview of where both Sabbath and Ozzy would end up in 1980. It’s all subjective of what we like . This album gets dogged and overlooked. It shouldn’t be

@@Wolfdog65 i was born in '65 , i can't get older since about '05, haha

@@tinfoilhatter we are the same age

@@Wolfdog65 i was learnin' the first album when i was thirteen, it's 1978, and i've still got me red guitah from those days~ it's been with me ever since the last day of the seventh grade, me thirteenth birthday...

I always thought never say die was their heaviest metal album with their best guitar solos

I agree completely. I love that album....but everybody dissed it. Always loved Tech Ect too....

It seems like that they only do a box set for every other album

@Jax Teller Why do you say that?

Love that album too

I much prefer NSD over Technical Ecstasy. I actually like it more than Sabbotage as well.

Not sure what you mean by "loudness wars"...? The loudest and softest sounds an LP can play is about 70 decibels (dB). CDs can handle over 90 dB. In practical terms, this means that CDs have more than 10 times the dynamic range of LPs & that's a VERY good thing. Dynamic Range is no directly related to perceived loudness but become a factor because sound engineers tend to use compression to make the overall level of a cd or record conform to a given target level, and that affects the dynamic range. When cd's are mastered a maximum peak level is chosen & many engineers choose to use a higher level (versus vinyl) due to the increased dynamic range of cd's. That only makes sense, if you have more range to use then use it. They also tend to use compression to raise the perceived level of lower sounds (and decrease that of louder ones) & squeeze the final result (which makes sense up to a point). This makes human hearing interpret that as being overall louder sounding. Since digital signals create nasty/audible clipping & distortion if things are pushed beyond the 0 db limit this is not a good thing but some engineers do this anyway to make their cd sound louder (and the human brain usually interprets louder as better). This actually reduces the overall dynamics (due to the heavy compression). MAybe that's what you're referring to, it wasn't as much of any issue with vinyl since that medium has a lot less dynamic range available to it. Having said that since my music is all in digital form I do apply a type of compression to all of my tracks using MP3GAIN, a non-destructive method (analyzes MP3 files to determine how loud they sound to the human ear, then adjusts the files so that they all have the same loudness without any quality loss & writes that info to the MP3 tag info that my decoders can read & act on). It's important to me to have every track sound like it's playing at the same relative loudness level as I've got many playlists that contain many different songs from different albums & artists. Something you could never control when playing vinyl or cd's, unless you've got a top-level processor that can do something similar in real time (it's possible but very expensive). My receiver can "re-expand" MP3's in real time on playback which I think sounds pretty good. So to me there's really no loudness war

@@wolf1977 Very detailed response. Love it. For a brief explanation of loudness war, go to the 'Loudness war' article on Wikipedia. But yes, it is basically the dynamic range of the recording, not what's available on the medium. The article says in it's 2020's section that the problem is gone because all the music services are normalizing the music anyway. But the problem is still there for those of us who still buy music in physical format, like Pete here, and myself. As you say, engineers compress the music on the CDs to the limit because they have it available, but this makes everything sound louder, and there are no dynamics left in the music, it's just a wall of sound. In vinyl they can't do that, so there's more space for the instruments to 'breathe', and the music is clearer. Listen to albums that are super compressed (most everything this century) and compare it to the same album on either the original version or the vinyl. I have multiple examples: Metallica's 'Hardwired to self destruct', Rush's 'Clockwork Angels', Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' (remaster), most anything 'Remastered' (Rush is the big exception here, their remasters have been excellent). At first you may think the louder version sounds better, but after a while, your ears will start hurting, and mine can't take that abuse anymore. I also have all of my music in digital format, but mostly ripped from my own collection. And iTunes takes care of the perceived loudness for me. What iTunes does is that it analyzes the music, and it adjusts the dB output if it's too compressed. Here's an example from my library: a song that is heavily compressed (Foo Fighter's 'Everlong' from the original album) is reduced by -6.8dB. The same song from the Greatest Hits vinyl version is reduced by -2.7 dB. Another example: Rush's 'Crossroads' ('Feedback' album). Original CD release: -11 dB. 2016 vinyl release: -1.5 dB. So when I go to the record store to buy an album, and I see there's a vinyl version, most of the time I'll pick up the vinyl, because I know that my ears won't bleed after listening to it. :)

@@cepiloyo Sure, I love this subject, (high-fidelity) audio is one of my hobbies...Yes humans will almost always interpret "louder" as "better", that's the main reason for double-blind listening tests. I have digital mp3's from both online purchases (mostly) and ripped cd's & vinyl. I also use iTunes as (one of, Plex is the other) my music library but I don't utilize their native "Volume Adjust" feature, I find this doesn't work that well & typically only works within iTunes itself which I rarely use for playback (I use iTunes mostly to organize/manage my database). Instead I manually apply MP3Gain adjustments, using a target of 92dB, to all my files before I finalize them. That info gets written to the tag info of every MP3 & can then be read by other playback software outside of iTunes so it's portable (Plex uses its own scheme that to me sounds better than what iTunes is trying to do). It utilizes the LAME3.10 encoder, a very good-sounding scheme (IMO). Volume leveling (eg "normalization") is a HUGE topic that can't be adequately discussed in this type of forum though, for that matter so is compression... Sounds like what you referred to by "loudness war" is what I thought, the concept that overuse of compression to raise the average volume level (and the perceived loudness to human ears) is negatively impacting dynamics & therefore sucking the life out of the music. Again, since the cd format has much more dynamic range available (versus vinyl) there's nothing wrong with using it, in fact it'd be pretty dumb not to. When done correctly it can for example go a long way towards accurately recreating the sound of a live recording. The problem is the overuse of compression to make your product sound the loudest (="best"), which then actually works against squeezing out more dynamic range & in fact does the opposite. That's definitely the case. However, for me personally that's not an issue because my online digital music sources seem to provide pretty good-sounding "master" versions of their tracks, much of which seems to be taken from vinyl (to your point about preferring LP versions to cd's). Also they're not monkeying with that data, some others compress their files so when I come along & use MP3Gain to normalize my music I would really be normalizing (and compressing) twice instead of once, not a good thing. And don't get me started on online music streaming services, many of them do much worse things to their files before serving them up to you. One major one in particular (you know who you are but it rhymes with "schmoo-tube") will upload you own ripped tracks & actually do what's called "music matching" to replace your track with their own version, which has who-knows-what properties & sound quality. This is so they can save storage space & only have to maintain their version of a given song. So when you stream "your" song you're actually hearing theirs, plus they never give you back access to your original version of that song (hopefully you saved it locally otherwise it's gone forever). This should be criminal, especially since they don't make this practice clear up-front. They used to have another music streaming product (rhymed with "schmoogle") that didn't do this & just uploaded your exact version like they should... So I don't hear any loudness war going on in my music library because of the above, and because I'm now 100% digital. Those still buying physical media will unfortunately be dealing with this issue for a long time to come. If ultimately ripping/converting your music to digital form you'll want to be very careful when picking your encoder(s), they're not all equal, and the exact normalization scheme (ditto). Also this is why to me these multi-channel (or even stereo) remixes don't make sense, especially for the extra $s...Just a quick plug for Plex, it's free to use (except for some upscale features), easy to install, totally portable so you can stream your music anywhere, it's secure & you control which devices/users have access, is constantly updated with new features & bug fixes, and has nice music management features (looks good too with its album cover art & additional band info). It's basically like having your own radio station that only plays the music you like. I'd put it up against any other product out there including those online music streamers

Absolutely. To hear Chris review an album he hates but talking about how he’s on his 13th copy - it would be gold. I did just order this set and the Sabotage one a few minutes ago. I caved. Looking forward to it.

All Moving Parts Stand Still Geezer Butlers funkiest bass line ever.

Megadeth's older stuff got trashed that way

Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die are really much better than people give them credit for.

@@nankypooh655 I agree (as a "casual" BS fan) but I suspect that the hardcore fans won't agree

@@wolf1977 Yeah, everybody agrees the first four albums are really the "Classics" but I think people are missing out if they just dismiss Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die. Their loss, I guess.

It's great hearing Ozzy's vocals more prominently in the mix. He's astounding on this. Yeah, I think he sounds fantastic on the live show as well...

metal probably wouldn't have happened without Sabbath. It was a genre that was influenced by Christian horror, I think. Metal has gothic Christian roots. It wouldn't have been created later because it's distinctly European. Judas Priest heard Sabbath and turned metal from their influence. Sabbath is ground zero for metal. Deep Purple was influenced in their direction from Sabbath too. They wouldn't have made metal because they ind of had more of a party sound whereas Sabbath was the death rock sound.

@@MicahMicahel I agree with that, BS was at the forefront of "proto-metal" which later turned into metal. Also bands like Sir Lord Baltimore, Iron Butterfly, Blue Cheer, Captain Beyond (with members of Purple & Butterfly) & others. For that reason alone they're an important band in the history of rock

No, It's an American Professional. I ALMOST got the Beck model though.

@@seaoftranquilityprog I have the Jeff Beck Signature (in White), great guitar

Thanks for the recommendation. Another source for music. I plan to buy the box set.

Yes my favorite song off the album! Iommi's solos are insane on it!

agreed.

Totally agree, I don't have those Yes remixes but have heard some of it (on a good/surround sound system) & they sound fantastic. Goes to my earlier point about the source master tapes needing to be of high quality to make this remix process worthwhile. It's like when they take old films from the 40's & rescan them in 8k - why (other than to digitally preserve them forever but you don't need 8k for that)? You can clean up the original up to a certain point but beyond that you're not adding anything new that wasn't originally there. Also the general sound of BS I don't think lends itself to remixes. Some will want this set for the bonus live tracks rather than the new versions

They probably won't do that not enough people to buy it they'll probably just reissued it as a single album on vinyl

@@mikekeeler6362 hey Mike have you heard that Tony Iommi Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton have contributed to the upcoming solo album by Ozzy Osbourne? Cheers brother Mike

@@mikekeeler6362 there's even the possibility of them doing another studio album together. The news came out on October 2nd see what you can find out.

@@richardhincemon9423 I had heard that Tony iomi Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton we're going to do something on Ozzy's new solo album but I have not heard of anything Black Sabbath and how are they going to record this when Tony can't travel and they're still in lockdown in England I don't know when they're going to do this 10 years from now and they're all dead

@@richardhincemon9423 and I don't see how Ozzie is going to travel with his Parkinson's disease England's no place to go and Tony can't travel with his condition

Nope, not new.

You should also check out Heaven & Hell (again) - great record

@@wolf1977 I have that one! It’s a classic. My uncle turned me on to them & he didn’t like this one or ‘Never say Die” very much. I guess I just overlooked those albums based on *his* review. I’m listening to this right now. It’s .. OK. I’m only a few songs in. Ozzy sounds strained … great guitar tone though.

@@hailmaryrecordings8255 I also like Never Say Die too, along with select tracks off some of their earlier albums

@@hailmaryrecordings8255 imo never say dies a lot more enjoyable of a listen than technical ecstasy, it's not very sabbath-like but its interesting and has a lot of jazz elements to it. i like what technical ecstasy is going for, its just not executed as well as it couldve been

@@ChimpusKongus Actually that's why I like both of those records (and a lot more than the "typical"/classic BS stuff) more than most of their discog, the different musical elements being employed & even some jazzy-sounding bits. Then again on my fave BS record Heaven And Hell there's almost none of that but the songwriting is so strong. BTW: Zakk Wylde was quoted as saying that no record w/o Ozzy on vocals should be called Black Sabbath, especially not Heaven And Hell (I don't agree). Sounds to me a bit like Purple fans not acknowledging any non-Blackmore album as Deep Purple

You mean the Steven Wilson remixes of the Steven Wilson remixes? 🤷‍♂️ Maybe some previously unknown cowbell parts come to the foreground...Now we're just being mean to Mr Wilson

I'm waiting for the super duper including the Sharon pooper scooper Deluxe box set dollar sign dollar sign dollar sign dollar sign!