Although 1994’s Black Sabbath album Cross Purposes performed respectably, charting on both sides of the Atlantic (No.41 in the UK, No,122 in the US), bassist Geezer Butler jumped ship for Ozzy Osbourne’s solo band, and Tony Iommi realised that some stability was necessary. The call went out, and Sabbath’s Tyr-era lineup reunited, with bassist Neil Murray and drummer Cozy Powell joining the guitarist and frontman Tony Martin.
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Forbidden, the album Sabbath made, was assured of its notoriety when the band’s label I.R.S. put forward the name of Ernie Cunningham, better known as Ernie C, the guitar player with rapper Ice T’s group Body Count, as its producer.
As realisation dawned that the album, which would be titled Forbidden, was becoming a car crash, Iommi was powerless to hit the brakes.
Decades later, Ice-T’s spoken word part on the album’s track The Illusion Of Power remains a genuine WTF moment.
And despite peaking at No.71 in Britain, Forbidden dropped off a cliff in the US and remains the least successful Black Sabbath album of them all
“Forbidden has been a thorn in my side for years,” Iommi told Classic Rock. “I knew all about Ice-T and that he was good, but I didn’t expect him to bring along his guitar player to produce the album.
When a band knows its sound and exactly what it wants, bringing in an outsider is very disruptive. I found myself on the sidelines. Our whole situation had become so frail.”
In 2024, Iommi brought Forbidden right up to date, making it sound more Sabbath-y. “I found some bits of guitar that Ernie hadn’t used,” he said. “Within the obvious constraints, I managed to make things sound a hell of a lot better.”
Every week, Album of the Week Club listens to and discusses the album in question, votes on how good it is, and publishes our findings, with the aim of giving people reliable reviews and the wider rock community the chance to contribute.
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“When the most influential heavy metal band ever to have roamed the earth teams up with Body Count’s Ernie C to try and inject new life into their sound, it should have been the signal to give up the ghost.
But poor Black Sabbath named an album Never Say Die because they meant it, and this sad album is a reminder of how dim even the brightest lights can get.
Where their last album was an uneven but pleasant return to form, this is just the band going through the motions.” (AllMusic)
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“Although Headless Cross is criticised by dramatic vocals, Born Again is criticised by bad production and “chemistry” between Gillan and Sabbath, Seventh Star is criticised to be a cheesy 80s album and not a Sabbath album, nothing can save Forbidden from harsh criticism.
Even for Sabbath fans Forbidden is easily avoided, and it’s justified. But… if you like an uninspired and boring metal album… what are you waiting for?” (Sputnik Music)
“This album has few similarities to classic Sabbath albums such as Master Of Reality and Paranoid. However, this album does have its moments.
Vocalist Tony Martin is a decent heavy metal singer, but the songwriting is where this album suffers. Instead of going for the usual doomy atmosphere, it appears the band decided to go in a bit more of a mainstream direction as the songs have a more upbeat feel than much of the band’s early work.” (Metal Reviews)
What you said…
Gus Schultz: I haven’t really listened to any Sabbath since the original lineup disbanded. I bought the Dio albums at the time but the sound just wasn’t Black Sabbath sounding for my tastes.
As great and iconic metal singer Dio was, to me everything he sang on sounded like a Dio album, but I digress. I think my point is regardless of the singer they just don’t capture that rich dark sound they had developed in the 70’s, which was fading regardless as time passed in the original lineup as Ozzy was falling into addiction.
I had not listened to the original mix of this album as they were off my radar at the time but the remix does not impress me at all.
If it were not for Tony’s iconic guitar (which was muted by 90s production) I wouldn’t realise this was a Sabbath LP. As with most classic bands, time hasn’t been very kind to them, and holding on to the magic of the past is difficult.
Although some of it came back with Ozzy’s return, nothing really came to fruition as far as studio material.
Sometimes I think it’s impossible to capture the magic of the past, (especially when you have different musicians coming and going) and this album does not do it at all. I’ll stick to the original lineup material.
Gino Sigismondi: I come at this from the perspective of someone who has never heard the original, having pretty much checked out after Mob Rules.
So I only know the new remix, and I think it’s great! On the earlier Tony Martin records, they had taken the dragons and demons thing about as far as it could go (and let’s face it: you’ll never out-castle Dio…), so the lyrical direction is refreshing.
Cozy is a monster, and I find Neil Murray one of the most criminally overlooked bass players of his era. At times, this reminds me of the Iommi/Hughes Fused record. Perhaps, like Seventh Star, it just shouldn’t have been called a Sabbath record?
And all the hubbub over the Ice T spot? It’s over so quickly it hardly seems worth getting so upset over. Obviously, this doesn’t hold a candle to the Ozzy and Dio albums, and The Eternal Idol is still the best Tony Martin effort, but this album doesn’t deserve its poor reputation.
Chris Downie: Football fans will be only too familiar with the ‘game of two halves’ analogy, and it’s one that springs to mind when thinking of Black Sabbath’s 1995 Forbidden album.
Precipitated by the brilliant new Anno Domini: 1989-95 boxset, the Tony Martin era’s long-overdue reappraisal will see this album (newly remixed from the ground up by Tony Iommi) as a central talking point and rightly so.
While there are many Sabbath fans who cannot see beyond the original line-up, or at a stretch the Dio years, many who approached Forbidden back in the day knew there was a good album in there somewhere and that it was marred by poor production by Ernie C (Body Count were a hot band in the day, but the consensus was they didn’t mix well with Sabbath), but when this remix was announced, there were murmurs of optimism.
Upon first listen, it’s clear the sonics have been massively improved and the Sabbath sound we know and love, at least that of the criminally underrated Tony Martin iteration, is now present and correct. Ice T’s original original contribution has been pared back to that of a cameo, but without losing impact, while the title track and the album closer in particular now sound like formidable slabs of mid-90s heavy metal.
The only gripe is that, unlike the rest of the box set, the contributions of keyboard player Geoff Nicholls (RIP) have been reduced to barely audible on Forbidden and thus detract from his usual embellishing of their albums from Heaven And Hell onwards.
To be clear, once the dust settles on this rejuvenation, Forbidden is not a perfect album and, with a few sub-par efforts within, will always rank near the bottom of their albums list (I would rank it just above Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die and well above Seventh Star) and is the weakest of the Martin era. However, this fine remix sees justice finally done and will hopefully help kickstart an ongoing rehabilitation of Martin himself, both a fine singer and humble individual.
One thing that will never go away, however, is the debate (one for another day!) on whether Martin’s introduction on 1987’s The Eternal Idol should have also seen a new band emerge, unencumbered by the baggage of the Sabbath history. The rebranding of Heaven And Hell and Last In Line, for instance, have certainly seen new generations warm to the Dio Sabbath years and the Dio band. 7/10.
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