Tony Martin and Tony Iommi Explain Why Black Sabbath Album ‘Tyr’ Was So Different
Black Sabbath’s 15th studio album, 1990’s Tyr, was definitely a departure for the legendary metal band as then-vocalist Tony Martin shifted from Satanic themes to those of Norse mythology. In a new interview on guitarist Tony Iommi’s YouTube channel (transcribed by Metal Injection), Martin and Iommi explained the sudden departure in style, with Martin explaining that it was largely an attempt to move away from the signature styles of both of Sabbath’s other two most prominent vocalists, Ozzy Osbourne and Ronnie James Dio. Explains Martin:
“I couldn’t really do Ozzy’s kind of thing, and Ronnie’s thing was unique to him, so I’m searching now. I thought, theme… ‘Vikings. I could write a whole thing around that.’ I started, but see by that time we were doing a lot of harmonies, which Sabbath hadn’t done before.
“Geoff was playing keyboards and I was doing harmonies and it started to get bit mad. Cozy Powell said ‘I haven’t heard harmonies like that since Three Dog Night.’ So I said ‘is that too much?’ He said ‘no, no keep going.’ So I persevered with it, really. The melodies sort of bubbled up and became what they were. But I did enjoy doing it.”
Iommi then chimed in with this:
“It was the lineup at that time, what we were presenting at that time. It was good. You can’t always just do exactly the same thing, and it was presenting it in a different way. We had riffs, but then the way Tony sang and the way we presented the songs was different.”
On the one hand, it makes sense not to copy other singers from the band’s past. On the other hand, the band is called Black Sabbath and not Black Midsummer, so you do come to expect more satanic themes from them. But it’s probably for the best that they switched things up from time to time.
