From the Dark: Iommi returns to the riff he built

From the Dark is Tony Iommi's first solo album in over 20 years: eight tracks, out October 23 on BMG. Nothing here sounds like a man on leave from his own band. The riffs are the large ones, the tempo is doom's, the tritone lands where it has always landed, and the voice on top belongs to Jørn Lande, who sings all eight. You know which record you are in before the first minute is out.

Birmingham, 1968, and Black Sabbath: Iommi co-founded the band, played on every release, and was its only constant member for over fifty years. Before any of that, at 17, a sheet metal factory took the tips of two fingers on his fretting hand, and the workaround became the style. Down-tuned strings, power chords, the devil's interval. Metal's heaviness is downstream of that adaptation. The solo records have never escaped the shadow. Seventh Star in 1986 was meant to be the first solo album until the label released it as Black Sabbath; Iommi arrived in 2000 and Fused in 2005 with Glenn Hughes; then Heaven & Hell and The Devil You Know in 2009, which stopped when Ronnie James Dio died in 2010.

From the Dark is a band record wearing a solo name. Becky Baldwin plays bass, Karl Brazil plays drums, Mike Exeter handles keyboards and orchestration, and Lande is at the front of every track. Brian May contributes additional guitar, though the credits do not say where. Ben and Ralph Baker executive produced with Equator Music, and the sleeve is credited to The Creative Corporation and Joseph Niet. BMG and Bluefame put it out on CD, streaming and a limited 45 RPM vinyl. Eight tracks, no interludes, one guest.

The sound is the one Iommi invented and has spent five decades refinishing. Doom's crawl, traditional metal's marching riff, and a US power metal streak that pushes the tempos and the vocal toward something bigger than the room. Exeter's keyboards stay under the guitars rather than beside them, which is how two players and a singer end up sounding like a hall. The low end carries the record: Baldwin's bass is mixed high enough to be a second riff, Brazil's kit is dry and forward, and the pair give the songs a floor to stand on. Lande is the other half of the deal. Fierce, aggressive, and he never hands a verse back to the guitar.

The order of the tracks matters. 'Over the Violent Sun' opens and sets the terms: the riff first, Lande second, which is the right order of operations for a record like this. 'Black Times' states the weather in the title and does not hedge it in the vocal. Then 'World Alone', one of the two singles released ahead of the album, which has to stand on its own before anybody has heard the other seven, and does.

'Beyond the Dead' and 'Death Wake' hold the middle, both of them carrying the same weight as the front half, with nothing between them to break the fall. 'Stormwatcher' is the other single, named a heavy song of the week before most people had heard the rest of the record. 'Return of the Arbalist' has the best title on the sleeve. 'Legacy' closes, and if a last track is supposed to settle something, that one gets the room to settle it.

The cost of that consistency is that nothing here surprises you, and one setting does most of the work. Lande is at full force from the first bar of 'Over the Violent Sun' to the last of 'Legacy', and eight tracks of that leave no valley for the peaks to read as peaks. Brian May's additional guitar is a pleasure you have to go hunting for, because the credits will not say which track to check.

That makes From the Dark a 3.5: good, better than good whenever the guitars are the argument, and not pretending to be anything else. Twenty years away and he came back with the same dark he left. The name on the sleeve is Iommi's; the sound is the one he gave away in 1968 and never quite left, and 'Legacy' takes its time saying so.

The tracklist

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