By Monk
Tony ‘The Cat’ Martin should be an immediately identifiable name to all metalheads of a certain generation. He was, after all, the second longest serving singer in Black Sabbath, lasting, on and off, the guts of a decade and recording five studio albums with the increasingly dystopic Iommi as the guitarist tried his damnedest to pummel the band’s legacy into the ground in the mid- to late-Nineties. In my book, the highlight of his time before the ‘phone stopped ringing, as he described it in an interview I did with him back in 2012, was the title track of the ‘Headless Cross’ album: definitely one of my top ten Sabbath songs of all time…
Back when I conducted that interview, the man born Anthony Harford told me that he was working on his third solo album. Hell, he’d even given it a title – ‘The Book Of Shadows’: but, as he intimated at the time, “as usually happens in the music industry, you need to pay the bills and so you need to find something to do, so it got put on hold… (but) I still intend to finish it, if I can.” Well, almost exactly ten long years later, here it is: and, ironically, that working title is now one of the songs on the finished opus! And with Sabbath – well, at least Tony Iommi – finally seeming to recognize the importance of Martin’s contribution to the band’s legacy, there perhaps is no better time for the man himself to remind us of the same shadows that have hung over him in the intervening quarter of a century and prove, once again, that he is very much the author of his own fate…
In many ways, ‘Thorns’ is a throwback to Martin’s time with Sabbath, reflecting as it does the orchestral feel of both the ‘Eternal Idol’ and ‘Headless Cross’ albums. But that is where the comparisons most definitely, and defiantly, end, as this is an album on which Martin equally defiantly stamps his own identity – helped, on no small part, by newfound sidekick Scott McClellan, who helps bring a strident, triumphant and thoroughly 21st Century feel to Martin’s vocal deliveries, which remain in a true class of their own.
To carry on from my point above, ‘Thorns’ could also be seen as a throwback to the classic albums of the era in which he was first thrust to the forefront of the metal scene: an era in which the genre was pushing its boundaries, by becoming more bombastic, and confident in its abilities to do so. Power metal was starting to come to the fore, punishing and cajoling the “older” acts to live up to new challenges. It was a challenge which Martin helped Sabbath to meet, despite Iommi subsequently crushing that sense of ambition and potential achievement.
And it is one which is reflected in this magnificent album, which shows that Martin remains one of the most potent and impressive heavy metal vocalists of his, or any, generation, and combined with the right material and musicians he can continue to produce some of the most powerful pure heavy metal we can continue to have the joy to inject into our lives. The bai has some gulder on him, that’s for sure…
- ‘Thorns’ is out now. You can get your copy HERE.
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