Technical Ecstasy (studio album) by Black Sabbath

From Jboy56 08/23/2023 11:06

This is Sabbath album that sounds bad and lack riffs and bangers. The sound is muddled and somehow lacks the punch of supposedly heavy metal album.

Album Rating: 72.88
(583/8)

1.Back Street Kids. 65
2.You Won't Change Me. 88
3.It's Alright. 72
4.Gypsy. 67
5.All Moving Parts (Stand Still). 64
6.Rock 'N' Roll Doctor. 57
7.She's Gone. 84
8.Dirty Women. 86

From Boltzmann 10/22/2021 01:17

Genre purists have never stopped to amaze me. Even if you deviate from your usual style as elegantly as Black Sabbath on this album, you will receive hate. There's only one thing I can say to them: these artists you listen to are people, and they're very much into music in general, so there's a good chance that they also like stuff that's outside of their bubble, especially if shortly before their career the genre didn't exist at all. What did you think? They didn't listen to anything when they were teenagers? Anyway, I enjoy the static, emotionless, masculine head bangers from their first three albums as much as what they did on here. It's no less toxic though - I mean, I felt "nobody's gonna change me" for all the bad reasons, and that's exactly how I like my lower/middle class music. They seem to take a bit more Hendrix-esque approach on that track ("You Won't Change Me" to be clear), it builds and breaks similar to soul music or at least R&B, and has overall more melody and harmony to it than I expect from them - that someone could call this album soulless compared to the others is beyond me. Every album needs a perfect flaw where they just do something entirely different that doesn't really work and if it's as good as "It's Alright" then you really shouldn't be complaining. I especially like the Beach Boys-ish falsetto near the end. On "Gypsy" they're a bit more complex in structure than I'm used to, and a bit more theatrical, probably got the idea from Queen (I guess?). And again I would like to restate how elegantly they do all of this, not a moment they don't sound true to themselves. I think it's a great odd-1-out album, and every great band needs one.

From poppmusic 03/06/2021 18:16

Technically a well constructed album with some great solos and performances. It's not at all what you expect to hear on a Black Sabbath album, and I will go beyond that and say these are some rather soulless songs. Not uninspired; certainly the band was trying hard to craft good rock songs. More like, there's no real vision to these songs, they just kind of exist here and fail to make an impact beyond the scope of the recorded album. Which makes listening to it a rather formal and dry experience.

From Goliath 10/15/2019 15:41

Looking on other sites I find some real rubbish written about this album. The gist of this seems to be that the band have begun to unravel and this is reflected in the quality of the album. This is of course ridiculous, Fleetwood Mac were in turmoil when recording Rumours yet the resulting album is a real classic. The first 10 Sabbath albums are all my favourites, (OK, side two of Never Say Die has some filler), and I find it difficult to choose between them, Technical Ecstasy should not be 3,691st on the greatest album list!

From Goliath 09/28/2018 07:28

At last someone else has realized what a great track 'You Won't Change Me' is! One of Sabbath's best.

A very underrated album, in my opinion much better than 'Vol 4' as is ''Never Say Die'. Still a very heavy album when it needs to be, like for example, the riff and keyboard string intro of 'You Won't Change Me'. Packs quite a punch with some cracking guitar soloing throughout and the drums virtually jump out of the speakers! The sleeve design lets it down a bit but that is a minor point really as the music is great.

From Brandon8 04/30/2018 00:07

Definitely an underrated album I am glad I finally listened to it. All the songs are good especially Tracks 1-4. Its a good change of pace album.

From Goliath 01/15/2018 12:52

Badly under rated album, it does not sound like previous Sabbath albums but that is no reason to dismiss it.

From Fischman 12/15/2016 16:39

I find this album to be far better than the typical narrative it receives. I even like the oft-maligned ballad, It's Alright. The heavy metal high point is 'All Moving Parts (Stand Still).'