I'm in the middle of gorging myself with Sabbath Bloody Sabbath by Black Sabbath. Not light stuff, not frivolous stuff, as is commonly supposed, and all about man's inhumanity to man. In fact, listening to Black Sabbath in a recession this never-ending and steep is a stern reminder, to those of us who have spent our lives writing partly about hetero sex and relationships, that there is other essential terrain to be covered. In a human landscape incorrigibly and invariably at least partially dominated by killing and killers, who are the killers, and what happens in their brains? How are they able to rationalize what they do? Can they? The tenor of this album, thematically, is claustrophobic and dour, but honest, and honestly about taking an approach to songwriting grounded in the grimmest, most primeval levels of human reality.
