CONFIRMED: tony lommi release his album just now…..

Although 1994’s Black Sabbath album Cross Purposes performed respectably, charting on both sides of the Atlantic (No.41 in the UK, No,122 in the US), bassist Geezer Butler jumped ship for Ozzy Osbourne’s solo band, and Tony Iommi realised that some stability was necessary. The call went out, and Sabbath’s Tyr-era lineup reunited, with bassist Neil Murray and drummer Cozy Powell joining the guitarist and frontman Tony Martin.

Forbidden, the album Sabbath made, was assured of its notoriety when the band’s label I.R.S. put forward the name of Ernie Cunningham, better known as Ernie C, the guitar player with rapper Ice T’s group Body Count, as its producer.

As realisation dawned that the album, which would be titled Forbidden, was becoming a car crash, Iommi was powerless to hit the brakes. Decades later, Ice-T’s spoken word part on the album’s track The Illusion Of Power remains a genuine WTF moment. And despite peaking at No.71 in Britain, Forbidden dropped off a cliff in the US and remains the least successful Black Sabbath album of them all

“Forbidden has been a thorn in my side for years,” Iommi told Classic Rock. “I knew all about Ice-T and that he was good, but I didn’t expect him to bring along his guitar player to produce the album. When a band knows its sound and exactly what it wants, bringing in an outsider is very disruptive. I found myself on the sidelines. Our whole situation had become so frail.”

In 2024, Iommi brought Forbidden right up to date, making it sound more Sabbath-y. “I found some bits of guitar that Ernie hadn’t used,” he said. “Within the obvious constraints, I managed to make things sound a hell of a lot better.”