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10.0
57029
10.0 |
God Is In The TV
Its unruly ability to embody and yet rejuvenate the essence of the groups signature sound firmly asserts one final exclamation mark on one of music’s most extraordinary careers
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9.0
55596
9.0 |
All Music
Unexpectedly brilliant, apocalyptic, and essential for any die-hard metal fan
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8.0
55572
8.0 |
The Digital Fix
With 13 they have defied all the doubters and delivered a fitting finale to the illustrious recording career of one of our truly great rock bands
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8.0
55582
8.0 |
The Arts Desk
Ozzy has one of the most inhuman voices in popular music this side of Kraftwerk
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8.0
55668
8.0 |
Paste Magazine
13 suffers from sounding a little too sanitary, but Iommi’s guitar work is still plenty Satan-y
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8.0
55468
8.0 |
Q
Black Sabbath roll back the years and sound young again - and blacker than ever. Print edition only
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8.0
55496
8.0 |
The Irish Times
It’s like punk rock never happened: thunder ominously cracks, lightning frighteningly strikes, church bells dolefully ring
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8.0
55508
8.0 |
Clash
Sabbath have produced a muscular, urgent sounding record that does no disservice whatsoever to those early metal masterpieces
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8.0
55518
8.0 |
The Independent
The band aren't restricted solely to the usual Satanic gloom
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7.0
55470
7.0 |
NME
How much sense can Black Sabbath make in 2013? Precisely the same they did in 1978
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7.0
55471
7.0 |
Uncut
This is a long and solid album rather than an erratically brilliant one
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7.0
55561
7.0 |
Pitchfork
Though fans may resent Black Sabbath for not resolving their personal differences more gracefully, one can't deny the pull of that existential outcry as channeled into what we now know as heavy metal
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7.0
55509
7.0 |
Drowned In Sound
13 does what you’d expect it to, no more, no less. It doesn’t break new ground, it doesn’t have the impact of Sabbath’s early work (how could it?), but nor does it tarnish the band’s legacy
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7.0
55466
7.0 |
Rolling Stone
Revisits, and to an extent recaptures, the crushing, awesomely doomy spectacle of their first few records
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7.0
55623
7.0 |
The Line Of Best Fit
If it’s the beginning of the end it’s a decent way to go out
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7.0
55649
7.0 |
Consequence Of Sound
13 is a return to form — if a somewhat obvious one — and an example of perseverance
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6.8
55718
6.8 |
Sputnik Music (staff)
13 is primarily a journey into familiar territory, one that yet again focuses on Black Sabbath's acumen for vintage heavy metal
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6.0
55628
6.0 |
Slant Magazine
13 is ultimately a solid, back-to-basics return that proves Black Sabbath is still the exemplary blueprint for heavy metal
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6.0
55760
6.0 |
Spin
It is just okay
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6.0
55978
6.0 |
State
If they quit while they’re still back out in the lead then this will serve as a fitting coda to one of rocks defining careers
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6.0
55467
6.0 |
The Guardian
Somewhere on the way back, they seem to have recovered the urgency and edge that originally drove them
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6.0
55469
6.0 |
Mojo
This is vintage Sabbathian slow-grind all the way. Print edition only
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6.0
55541
6.0 |
Independent on Sunday
It sounds like a Sabbath album, from the tortuous lyrics to the eight-minute track lengths. But something about it feels wrong
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6.0
55547
6.0 |
The Observer
If songs like the mantric, seven-minute Damaged Soul sound three decades old, then it's all to the good
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6.0
55555
6.0 |
Daily Telegraph
American super-producer Rick Rubin has encouraged the band to take things right back to their roots, imagining 13 as the sequel to their 1970 breakthrough Paranoid, whose hard-rock power and dark lyrics effectively invented a whole genre of music
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5.8
55634
5.8 |
A.V. Club
If this is Black Sabbath’s final statement, with Osbourne or otherwise, at least it’s done with reverence for what the band’s music has always been: not an answer, but a devastating question
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4.0
55756
4.0 |
PopMatters
With songwriting that imitates rather than evokes the past, all the goodwill in the world doesn’t change the fact that Sabbath has failed to deliver on its promise
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4.0
55569
4.0 |
The Scotsman
There’s little fire nor hunger in this reunion offering
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4.0
55514
4.0 |
Evening Standard
On this 19th album they sound every last one of their sixtysomething years
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