The name “Black Sabbath� is essentially a synonym for “heavy metal�; after all, the band pretty much invented the genre back in the dim dark days of the early ‘70s. Through their many incarnations over the years Black Sabbath have left an indelible and decidedly influential stain on the world of music – but possibly the greatest line up ever was fronted by self-proclaimed Prince of Darkness and latter-day reality TV star, Ozzy Osbourne.

The Prince of Darkness saw the light - and it was BAD!

Taken from an unnamed gig in 1978, Never Say Die delivers one of the final appearances of this classic line up from the tour of the same name, although there’s nothing to indicate where this particular gig this actually was. A massive backdrop of doom descends, Ozzy leaps about the stage punching the air like the most hyperactive of hyperactive things, and the band literally thunder through ten songs, including the classic War Pigs and a disappointingly brief Paranoid. The musical trio seem to be in fine, full-on assault form, although the Ozzster sounds a tad croaky at times – mind you with the “quality� of this disc it isn’t necessarily that easy to tell, but more on that shortly…

Track listing…

Yurkk! Blurgh! Floarhhh! Horphh!

That is by no means an indictment upon the music, or even an impersonation of Ozzy’s sometimes intriguing vocal stylings, rather a reaction to the presentation of this release, easily the worst this particular little reviewer has had the misfortune to bear witness to - ever. Anybody who witnessed The Osbournes on TV will be familiar with what their dog Lola did with alarming regularity – she threw up. Sadly the full frame vision here looks worse, much worse, than any such thing a canine could ever regurgitate. Sure it dates back to 1978; however proceedings are fuzzy in the extreme and riddled with unbelievable amounts of video noise, with things completely falling to shit whenever bright lights or strobes happen to arc up. Massive interference lines abound, and that’s almost one of the pluses of this transfer!

Hey, it’s a music release, so as long as the sound’s good, right? Well, sadly the audio isn’t much better. Despite a Dolby Digital 5.1 remix, things are extremely muffled – and face it, Ozzy’s hard enough to understand at the best of times, let alone when he sounds much like he’s been mummified in about 50 feet of concrete. The subwoofer manages to strain out the odd dull, lifeless thud, however otherwise it’s essentially a stupefyingly crap sounding, virtually mono affair. Meanwhile, the standard Dolby Digital stereo mix is even worse, bordering on being completely unable to be listened to without seriously threatening one’s sanity. I’ve heard bootleg tapes, recorded on a Walkman that was stuffed inside somebody’s coat, which sound breathtaking compared to this complete mess.

Well, perhaps the extras make up for all this then? Well, if there were any – any at all - they may have… but they would have had to have been pretty special, say perhaps a full concert from somewhere else that actually looked and sounded good?

Unfortunately Never Say Die is utterly appalling in every sense – except for the band’s performance. However witnessing this pretty damned hard quartet of out-and-out rockers fighting a losing battle with audio visual crapness is an extremely depressing sight. If you simply must own everything in the world with the words ‘Black’ and ‘Sabbath’ inscribed upon it go nuts. Otherwise avoid this or you may require a rabies shot…