Black Sabbath - Tony Martin Era

 My all time favourite band is Black Sabbath but when people think about Black Sabbath usually it's classics such as Paranoid or Children of the Grave from the early days with Ozzy Osbourne. However my favourite era of the band is the most overlooked one from the late 80s, the Tony Martin era. 

 All previous vocalists had come from big bands, Dio from Rainbow, Ian Gillan from Deep Purple but Martin was a nobody. His vocal style is an operatic style but a much cleaner one compared to Dio. My favourite thing about him as the frontman of the band was the fact that he covered songs from all eras when performing live. His discography with the band started with the Eternal Idol, originally with Ray Gillen on vocals, my favourite songs are The Shining, Born To Lose and Hard Life to Love. 

The next few albums, Headless Cross and Tyr featured my favourite drummer Cozy Powell and Neil Murray from Whitesnake on bass. These are both massively overlooked albums in the discography and I'm a big fan of the dark occult-like lyrics of HC and the Norse mythology inspired lyrics of Tyr, these are the two albums where Martin started writing his own lyrics for the songs. Favourites from these albums are When Death Calls with Brian May as a guest and Anno Mundi. This era of the band also features an extra layer of keyboard and synthesizer from Geoff Nicholls who was with the band for over 20 years and it's also, in my opinion, the peak of Iommi's guitar playing.

Later in this era were Cross Purposes with Geezer returning for bass and Bobby Rondinelli on drums. Favourites from this are Back To Eden and I Witness. And the final album with Tony Martin ,reuniting the previous line up, is the infamous Forbidden, a very over hated album due to the production. Favourite songs are Rusty Angels, Get a Grip and Can't Get Close Enough to You.