"BORN AGAIN"-ERA BLACK SABBATH TOGETHER AGAIN?

In the past twelve or thirteen years, Black Sabbath reunited with their original lineup -- Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward -- for a number of tours and even a few new songs. They've also reunited with the second lineup -- Iommi, Butler, Ronnie James Dio and Vinny Appice. -- under the name Heaven & Hell. Those were the two best versions of the band.

But now the excellent official Sabbath website, Black Sabbath Online, says that a reunion of the Born Again lineup may be in the works.  Well, not quite, but Tony Iommi may be working with Sabbath's third singer, Ian Gillan (more well known as the singer of the classic lineup of Deep Purple). They cite the Swedish Deep Purple fan site, Highway Star. Gillan says that they may start up some new project together.  I'm sure it wouldn't be a Sabbath thing -- in fact, the Gillan version of Sabbath wasn't supposed to be "Black Sabbath," but the record label put pressure on Iommi to call it that (and also, the band featured Geezer Butler and, at first, Bill Ward).

I kind of remember the album from when it came out: I liked the song "Trashed."  But oddly, I got re-turned on to the album when I read the excellent 33 1/3 series book on Black Sabbath's Master Of Reality (an Ozzy-era album).  In that book (totally a work of fiction about how a boy's life was affected by the album, it had nothing to do with the actual making of the album), the narrator talked about how great Born Again was, so I bought it on iTunes. I think it is pretty powerful, not as good as the Ozzy-era stuff (or Gillan's best stuff with Purple), but still pretty powerful.