Technical Ecstasy
| Technical Ecstasy | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by Black Sabbath | ||||
| Released | 25 September 1976 | |||
| Recorded | June 1976 | |||
| Studio | Criteria Studios, Miami, Florida | |||
| Genre | Heavy metal | |||
| Length | 40:35 | |||
| Label | Vertigo | |||
| Producer | Black Sabbath | |||
| Black Sabbath chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | |
Technical Ecstasy is the seventh studio album by English rock band Black Sabbath, produced by guitarist Tony Iommi and released in September 1976. The album was certified Gold on 19 June 1997 and peaked at number 51 on the Billboard 200 Album chart.
After the frustrating legal battles that accompanied the recording of their 1975 album Sabotage, Black Sabbath chose Miami's Criteria Studios for the making of Technical Ecstasy, which continued the band's separation from its signature doom and darkness that had been a trademark of the sound of their earlier albums. Writing in the July 2001 issue of Guitar World Dan Epstein noted, "The sessions proved extremely relaxing for everyone except Iommi, who was left to oversee the production while the others sunned themselves on the beach." Iommi explained to Guitar World in 1992, "We recorded the album in Miami, and nobody would take responsibility for the production. No one wanted to bring in an outside person for help, and no one wanted the whole band to produce it. So they left it all to me!" In the liner notes to the band's 1998 live album Reunion, Phil Alexander writes that while the band were struggling to finish the album "rock had spawned a new set of iconoclasts as the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Damned led the UK rock explosion. Suddenly Sabbath found themselves both unsure of their musical direction and labeled as has-beens." "It's not like now: If you're a heavy metal band, you put out a heavy metal album," Butler explained to Uncut in 2014. "Back then, you had to at least try to be modern and keep up. Punk was massive then and we felt that our time had come and gone." To make matters worse for the band, manager Don Arden began spending more of his time focusing on another one of his acts, ELO, whose 1975 album Face The Music was their first to make the US top ten. Iommi's determination to move Sabbath into a new direction was misguided according to some, with Mick Wall noting in the 2013 book Black Sabbath: Symptom of the Universe that while future soft rock million-sellers Hotel California and Rumours were just around the corner, "to try and force that sound on Black Sabbath was like trying to put lamb's wool on a suit of armour. It just didn't work, pleasing nobody."
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