Black Sabbath played Xfinity Center – 8/25
Black Sabbath, pioneering giants of heavy metal, returned to Mansfield’s Xfinity Center on Thursday night for their last-ever Massachusetts show – a stop on their current farewell tour fittingly dubbed “The End.” Most of what you need to know about Sabbath is right there in the first six minutes of the band’s discography. The self-titled first track on their self-titled debut album (yes, that’s “Black Sabbath” by Black Sabbath from Black Sabbath) finds Ozzy Osbourne confronting a demonic presence as a towering doom riff rumbles and ominous bells clang. It’s a slab of eerie, psychedelically blues-tinged heaviness that would help to inspire an entirely new genre of music. It was also the start of an astonishing five-year run of classic records with the band’s original lineup, 3/4s of which make up its current iteration. How could the band have began a farewell show with anything else?
From those opening moments, this was a tighter version of Black Sabbath than the one that headlined the same space on the 13 tour three years ago. The group’s instrumental core – guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Tommy Clufetos – sounded spot-on in both cases, but Osbourne’s more focused (and in-key) performance on Thursday night rendered this a more satisfying survey of the band’s early days. And ultimately, that early 70s vibe is what this tour is all about. The band has classics under Dio’s tenure of course, and other scattered LPs with their defenders, but those first five years are Sabbath’s legacy, and that’s clearly what “The End” sets out to celebrate.
Thursday’s warm August evening found the masses gathered at Mansfield’s middle-of-nowhere corporate amphitheater in a celebratory mood indeed. Motörhead and Paranoid rang out across the parking lots as a well-oiled crowd filed in to the sounds of Long Beach rockers Rival Sons. The quartet’s no-frills hard rock sounded agreeable enough, but one can’t help but wish that Sabbath had chosen among the roughly 8 billion currently active metal bands they’ve inspired to serve as an opener instead. This was a point of contention on the band’s 2013 U.S. tour as well; lest we forget that the U.K. was treated to Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats on that run, while we got an Andrew WK DJ set stateside.
Post-turnover, our headliners announced their entrance with an animated video overture featuring a winged demon hatching from an oversized egg and laying waste to urban sprawl. Smoke of all varieties rose from the crowd on the Xfinity Center’s lawless general admission lawn. Horns were raised. And with “Black Sabbath,” The End began.
For the most part, the rest of the tour’s standardized setlist was a lean and crowd-pleasing affair. The hits – “War Pigs,” “Iron Man,” “Children of the Grave,” etc. – were delivered with conviction rather than rote obligation. “After Forever” and “Hand of Doom” offered pleasant surprises. “Paranoid” served its role as a predictable but reliably killer encore. That’s not to say that some tweaking would’ve been unwelcome, though. An extended drum solo during a Sabbath show for anyone who isn’t Bill Ward still feels tasteless, and while Technical Ecstasy‘s “Dirty Women” works as an Iommi solo showcase, it does feel like a strange inclusion when Vol. 4 only gets a single track (“Snowblind”) and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is glossed over entirely.
Still, griping about the lack of “A National Acrobat” feels beside the point when it comes to this tour. Regardless of whatever quibbles one may have with the set, the fact that Black Sabbath are here before our eyes and sounding this good in 2016 is pretty incredible. Moreover, there’s something to be said for such a legendary and massively influential band going out on their own terms, cheered on by a hugely appreciative fanbase. It remains a damn shame that things were never patched up with original drummer Bill Ward, but between a rock-solid reunion LP in 13 and this final tour, Sabbath have still exited gracefully.
A note on photos: the band would not credential any media shooters for this show. Trust me, I tried. I shot what I could from the lawn with my fixed 35mm Fuji X100, because it’s the only camera I own that would get past security, and then I cropped the hell out of them so I’d have a little something to share. Check out my pal Tim Bugbee’s recent posts for a few shots where the band are not specks on the horizon.
