What’s The Use of Black Sabbath’s Cross Purposes?

Is the band’s second I.R.S. album, released 30 years ago today, worth revisiting?

January 31, 2024January 31, 2024 Jedd Beaudoin 0 Comments 1994, 30th Anniversary, Black Sabbath, Bobby Rondinelli, Cozy Powell, Cross Purposes, Geezer Butler, Geoff Nicholls, I.R.S. Records, Tony Iommi, Tony Martin

Cross Purposes on cassette (Image: Discogs)

What the hell was Black Sabbath up to on this 1994 set?

About the best thing that you can say about it is that the album is largely inoffensive in its banality, not so much a bad album as a thoroughly forgettable one.

Face it: The ‘80s and ‘90s were not particularly kind to the Birmingham-born outfit—Tony Iommi was, for the most part, the sole remaining original member and although a brief reunion with Geezer Butler, Ronnie James Dio, and Vinny Appice for 1992’s Dehumanizer brought some relief for fans who’d slogged through some pretty serious detritus, the lineup was doomed. (Bright spot: We got the one good Sabbath record of the ‘90s.)

Iommi and Butler moved forward, bringing back vocalist Tony Martin and longtime keyboardist Geoff Nicholls. Rock steady drummer Cozy Powell was unavailable, which made room for former Rainbow timekeeper Bobby Rondinelli. Individually these players have their charms but collectively there’s just not much gas in the tank.

Martin proves himself a capable singer, often summoning a Dio-like roar, but his voice seems better suited to pop music than heavy rock. He could have led a slightly more bloodthirsty Mike and the Mechanics, but Sabbath?

It doesn’t help that he’s saddled with material that rarely rises to the occasion. The opening “I Witness” tumbles along promisingly enough but it feels too much like a retread of previous album openers, including Born Again’s “Trashed” and “Neon Knights” from Heaven and Hell.

Meanwhile, “Cross of Thorns” reads like the kind of half-baked number a middling German power metal band would track as a Japanese bonus cut a decade later. This is Sabbath not reaching for past glories but attempting to tap into the zeitgeist and failing. The mercifully short “Psychophobia” feels like a Soundgarden throwaway instead of a Sabbath A-side. At least until Martin starts singing. There, he frequently sounds like a man who has wandered into a jam session mid-tune, been handed a microphone, a lyric sheet, and been told to give it his all. He just can’t seem to connect.

Black Sabbath Cross Purposes, I.R.S. Records 1994

“Virtual Death” momentarily provides evidence of the Sabbath riff machine kicking into high gear, sounding lean and hungry and even a little like Alice In Chains. Then? It just plods on and on and on without a plot until it limps to a conclusion nearly six minutes after it started. By the time the fifth cut, “Immaculate Deception” rolls around, it’s pretty evident that the road forward will be hard going.

And it is.

The back end, including “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” and “Back to Eden,” are mostly noteworthy for how quickly one wants them to end rather than anything that occurs between their start and end points. Surprisingly, the closing “Evil Eye” provides a few moments of amusement. Rumored to have been co-written by Edward Van Halen, it provides a few reminders of Iommi’s greatness and Butler’s precision. But it, too, meanders far too much and finds Cross Purposes long outstaying its welcome.

In the end, the album’s title proves apt, the phrase cross purposes indicating one purpose working contrary to another. This reveals itself in the music and the 20 years since the record’s release have done nothing to improve its reputation. As apt a name as Cross Purposes is, perhaps the Japanese bonus cut, “What’s the Use?” even more so.