Mob Rules (album)
| Mob Rules | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
||||
| Studio album by Black Sabbath | ||||
| Released | 4 November 1981 | |||
| Recorded | 1981 | |||
| Studio | Record Plant, Los Angeles, California | |||
| Genre | Heavy metal | |||
| Length | 40:25 | |||
| Label |
Vertigo Warner Bros. (US/Canada) |
|||
| Producer | Martin Birch | |||
| Black Sabbath chronology | ||||
|
||||
| Singles from Mob Rules | ||||
|
||||
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
| Rolling Stone | |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | |
| Martin Popoff |  |
Mob Rules is the tenth studio album by English rock band Black Sabbath, released in November 1981. It followed 1980's Heaven and Hell, and it was the second and last Black Sabbath studio album to feature lead vocalist Ronnie James Dio prior to the 1992 album Dehumanizer.
Produced and engineered by Martin Birch, the album received an expanded edition release in 2010.
The very first new recording Black Sabbath made after the Heaven and Hell album was a version of the title track "The Mob Rules" for the soundtrack of the film Heavy Metal. The track "E5150" also is heard in the film but is not included in the soundtrack. According to guitarist Tony Iommi's autobiography Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven & Hell with Black Sabbath, the band began writing and rehearsing songs for Mob Rules at a rented house in Toluca Lake in Los Angeles. Initially the band had hoped to record in their own studio to save money and actually purchased a sound desk but, according to Iommi, "We just couldn't get a guitar sound. We tried it in the studio. We tried it in the hallway. We tried it everywhere but it just wasn't working. We'd bought a studio and it wasn't working!" The band eventually recorded the album at the Record Plant in Los Angeles.
Mob Rules was the first Black Sabbath album to feature Vinny Appice on drums, who had replaced original member Bill Ward in the middle of the tour in support of the previous year's Heaven and Hell. Asked by Joe Matera in 2007 if working with a new drummer was jarring after so many years, Butler replied, "No, because Vinnie was a big fan of the band and loved Bill's playing. Bill was one of his favorite drummers and so he knew all his parts and my bass parts and he adjusted accordingly to everybody in the band. He was brilliant. He came in and totally filled in Bill's shoes."
In an interview for the concert film Neon Nights: 30 Years of Heaven and Hell, Butler cites "The Sign of the Southern Cross" as his favorite Mob Rules track because "it gave me a chance to experiment with some bass effects." The album was the last time the band worked with producer and engineer Martin Birch, who went on to work with Iron Maiden until his retirement in 1992. Iommi explained to Guitar World in 1992, "We were all going through a lot of problems at that time, most of it related to drugs. Even the producer, Martin Birch, was having drug problems, and it hurt the sound of that record. Once that happens to your producer, you’re really screwed."
...
Wikipedia