Everything soon raises on a singly-hit power chord that sustains and rides out into the sky beyond the universe, through a black hole and into a parallel universe where Sabbath are now an acoustic calypso band playing for peanuts in white tails and top hats in some dimly lit alternate reality nightclub. Odd fragments of the previous mise en scene are revisited as the cosmic misfit of the stratosphere screams the invitation to his great unrequited love to “swim the magic ocean I’ve been crying all these years” while Bill Ward’s uninterrupted ride cymbal swishing galore fans out behind Iommi’s SG buzz sawing grind-out that pile drives through everything - except Ozzy’s vocals. Exactly what Ozzy is singing about is still somewhat a mystery (the lyrics out of reach even on the newly-remastered CD on Castle Communications) but it’s so urgently shrill, demented and exacting you go along with it without questioning it for a second. And here it’s heavier than all expectation as “Symptom Of The Universe” ensues like a tornado wrapped between your ears. But as with all Sabbath acoustic-based instrumentals, you know it’s a set up for something far heavier and pummeling. They’ve already nailed everything on the first track, but it’s only the beginning, as the interrupting “Don’t Start (Too Late)” match cuts to the now-trademark Iommi multi-fingered acoustic respite. From the opening hum of a turned up amplifier, an unmiked Ozzy screaming “Tch-COCK!” and count off, all explodes outwards from its first moment, “Hole In The Sky.” Ozzy’s vocals cut through everything, and the place he’s coming from is nowhere on earth - more like a weird, cosmic flat beyond the skies. Even with the addition of mellotron, synthesizer and chorus to the carpet-bombing qualities of Sabbath’s simple yet precise instrumentation, everything hangs together perfectly, and there’s not a wasted moment anywhere on the album. Outside its tightly-wielded bombast, the most startling thing about “Sabotage” is its production. This leaves the remaining instrumental tracks of “Don’t Start (Too Late)” and “Supertzar” to operate as (comparatively) calming links. But the unyielding two prong epics of “Symptom Of The Universe,” “Megalomania,” “Thrill Of It All” and “The Writ” are not the only places of unyielding heaviosity - “Hole In The Sky” and the other crazy train to nowhere, “Am I Going Insane (Radio)” are equal parts assault-o-rama lamas on the head’s inner hammer and anvil. An album of fantastically undiluted sonic insanity, “Sabotage” is split between elongated, two-part mindfuckers and briefer instrumental/more orthodox arranged songs.
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