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Classic Rock MagazineJul 23, 2013No, 13 isn't as good as their first six albums--what is?--but it's a million times better than most of what followed. [Summer 2013, p.86]
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Jul 8, 201313 gets tiresomely monolithic and ponderous.
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The WireJul 3, 2013This is perhaps the group's most straightforward release outside of their intermittent collaboration with late vocalist Ronnie James Dio. [Jul 2013, p.52]
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Jul 3, 2013The music roils and rumbles, allowing the group's folk roots to peek through, but it only sometimes rages or roars.
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Jun 27, 2013Rubin’s experiment has paid off handsomely, even though at times you’ll find yourself comparing the new songs to any number of familiar signature tunes from Sabbath’s catalogue.
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Kerrang!Jun 20, 2013In its eight track, Ozzy, Tony, and bassist Geezer Butler have managed to once again capture that special essence which makes them so magical. And it's bloody fantastic. [1 Jun 2013, p.52]
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Q MagazineJun 17, 2013They might be old, they might be poorly and they might be running scared from their wives, but on 13 Black Sabbath roll back the years and sound young again--and blacker than ever. [Jul 2013, p.102]
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MojoJun 17, 2013Iommi occasionally apes Slayer's squealing solos, but otherwise this is vintage Sabbathian, slow-grind all the way. [Jul 2013, p.82]
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Jun 14, 201313 certainly isn’t the all-blunts-blazing return Sabbath pledged, and with songwriting that imitates rather than evokes the past, all the goodwill in the world doesn’t change the fact that Sabbath has failed to deliver on its promise.
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Jun 13, 201313 is primarily a journey into familiar territory, one that yet again focuses on Black Sabbath's acumen for vintage heavy metal.
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Jun 13, 2013It is a bit Sabbath-by-numbers, but given the weight of history (it's their first studio album together in 35 years), you can see why they would kind of back into the thing.
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Jun 11, 2013The spirit of early Sabbath permeates 13, which is a solid record for those with realistic expectations.
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Jun 11, 2013The generic gloom of “Loner” is the only flat spot among the eight songs.
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Jun 11, 2013The head of steam 13 builds in its second half flattens with “Dear Father,” which concludes the album with an anticlimactic plop.
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Jun 11, 2013There aren’t any future gems here on the order of “Paranoid” or the immortal “Iron Man” but these songs could have been album tracks on any of the band’s early recordings.
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Jun 11, 2013Despite the volume, 13 is a return to form--if a somewhat obvious one--and an example of perseverance.
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Jun 10, 201313 is ultimately a solid, back-to-basics return that proves Black Sabbath is still the exemplary blueprint for heavy metal.
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Jun 10, 2013Here, every riff is full of life, the chemistry popping out in the open spaces, Ozzy's melancholy once again finally, and fittingly, overtop the soundtrack of metallic joy and madness, the whole thing combining to create a perfect metal sound the way only the masters can.
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Jun 10, 2013The good news is that 13 is an amalgam of everything you’d want from a new Black Sabbath album featuring three of the original members.
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Jun 10, 2013The influence of early Sabbath has become so omnipresent that it's come back to influence its very creators 40 years later, but the results are unexpectedly brilliant, apocalyptic, and essential for any die-hard metal fan.
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Jun 10, 2013Wilk does an adequate job on these extended tracks, but it’s the vitality of Iommi on guitar and Butler on bass that impresses.... Butler’s lyrics find their perfect match in Osbourne. In these songs, the singer wrestles with demons--psychosis, self-abuse, existential dread--with which he’s had considerable personal experience. It makes 13 something a bit more credible than just a souvenir for a reunion tour.
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Jun 10, 2013Sabbath have produced a muscular, urgent sounding record that does no disservice whatsoever to those early metal masterpieces.
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Jun 10, 2013In the end, 13 isn't what every Sabbath die-hard dreamed it might be: a true pick-up-where-they-left-off comeback for the group's founding quartet. But the record does belong in the view of every metalhead--not just because such a seminal band still deserves obligatory props, but because, imperfections aside, the record embodies the kernel of the original Sabbath idea.
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Jun 10, 2013It sounds like a Sabbath album, from the tortuous lyrics to the eight-minute track lengths. But something about it feels wrong.
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Jun 10, 2013Black Sabbath's first album with Ozzy Osbourne since 1978 is bluesier, leaner and substantially less cringe-making than a great many reunion cash jobs.
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Jun 7, 2013In expressing all of these [themes] without tumbling into absurdity, it helps to have a klaxon whine like Ozzy's delivering them, while Tony Iommi cranks out those trademark slow, molten-lead riffs that trundle through 13 like tank tracks.
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Jun 7, 201313 does what you’d expect it to, no more, no less.
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Jun 7, 2013With the hard-hitting yet loose-limbed playing of Rage Against the Machine drummer Brad Wilk, there is a real sense of top professionals at work.... Osbourne’s singing, by contrast, is strangely unexpressive, perhaps because there is no real possibility of emotional connection with lyrics that strain for grandiose effect but are flattened by clunking phrases and trite rhyming schemes.
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UncutJun 6, 2013Of course, Black Sabbath can't fully turn the clock back to the beginning--but they can still do a pretty good job of sounding like the beginning of the end. [Jul 2013, p.70]
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Jun 6, 2013Osbourne has talked, a little more realistically, about wanting to end his recording career with Black Sabbath "the right way", as opposed to with 1978's Never Say Die, an album he was too incapacitated even to finish. For all 13's flaws, it would be churlish to suggest they haven't succeeded in that aim.
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Jun 3, 201313 is steered by superproducer/superfan Rick Rubin, and it shows that, for all their innovations, Sabbath were a product of their era – at core, they're a blues-rooted prog-rock band, and 13 may surprise some people in its proto-metal traditionalism.
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Jun 3, 2013The result is surprisingly adventurous, considering the monochrome palette of Osbourne's latter-day solo work.... Still, Rubin makes too much here feel dry and disappointingly small.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 92 out of 100
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Mixed: 7 out of 100
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Negative: 1 out of 100
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Jun 11, 2013
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Jun 14, 2013
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Jun 23, 2013