Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Tony Iommi Feat. Dave Grohl & Brian May

Hey friends,

I came to musical consciousness in the late 90's amid Nu-Metal and grunge's dying star. This is probably why I pretty much went straight from shitty "Classic Rawk" directly into HC because rap-metal never did it for me and I never cared for pop punk. Of course, I did have some holdover time in FM's purgatorial pool while I figured out my ass from Age of Quarrel though, and here's where "Goodbye Lament" comes in.

The Iommi S/T solo album came without much fanfare and is largely un-remembered. It's sole single, "Goodbye Lament" is what I call a cult radio hit. I say "cult" because there was an MTV video for it (that aired after midnight), but it's not on Spotify or Apple Music.  I was in 8th grade when it dropped, and I bought it because I was definitely familiar with Sab expected it to be good. Therein lies the problem with solo albums though: nearly everything that made the solo artist good is fused with the music "of the day" to limp-luster results. It should also be noted that Iommi has tried his hand at "solo artist on 1986 on Seventh Star...even if it ended up just becoming a maligned and virtually unknown Black Sabbath album.

Anyway, Brian May (Queen) plays guitar on this track, but I didn't know that til much later. In fact, when it was introduced on the radio, it was always "Tony Iommi featuring Dave Grohl." Brian May was never mentioned. Thanks 100.5 The Fox.

Dave Grohl didn't always annoy me. In this era, he could do no wrong. That Probot album came out a bit later and we weren't inundated with a constant RSS feed of how damn cool and heroic and down to earth he was and how many beers he shared with beleaguered firemen. Nothing gold can say.

All things considered, this is a damn fine track though. A great riff that's unmistakeable Iommi and some goth-y aesthetics on the drum machine. Tony Iommi doubles up with some rock/metal luminaries throughout the rest of the record like Peter Steele and Billy Corgan but nothing really works all that well (even a collaboration with Ozzy!) so I wouldn't recommend tracking it down. If you're looking for a fine use of 4:57 though I'd say fire up the video down below.

Thanks for reading. I hope you like it.



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