As the story goes, Black Sabbath mainman Tony Iommi got drunk with ex-Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan in a pub one night in 1983. The next morning the latter was phoned by his irritated manager, who told him that Gillan had agreed to join Sabbath. The frankly unlikely partnership led to this sole album, issued in August that year.
One of Sabbath’s most derided releases, Born Again suffered from a curiously lightweight production and that vile sleeve, which used the same baby photo as Depeche Mode’s 1981 single New Life. Zero The Hero was a standout (hey, Cannibal Corpse covered it), as was Disturbing The Priest, but nonsense such as Digital Bitch, Trashed and Hot Line was generic rock guff that only a bunch of overpaid geezers having a laugh could ever have come up with.
Fortunately, the live disc that comes with this reissue is gripping, with an extended version of the Spinal Tap-inspiring Stonehenge and an entire Reading show from 1983 adding value. The sound of Gillan applying his world-class pipes to Ozzy’s original monotone on Paranoid and War Pigs is priceless, as is hearing Sabbath stroll their way through Purple’s Smoke On The Water. You really couldn’t make this up.
