Heading into "Children of the Sea" I didn't recall ever really listening to it before. I always linked it to the Master of Reality track "Children of the Grave" based on the similar name. After listening I felt silly as the two songs couldn't be any more dissimilar.While researching this incarnation of Sabbath I learned that this was the first song that the band wrote with Ronnie James Dio. I didn't find that hard to believe as lyrically it follows the story nature of the bulk of the Ozzy era material much more than the abstract nature of "Neon Knights".
After an acoustic driven intro that delivers some really nice interplay between Iommi and Butler, Dio comes in to set the scene. In an emotive vocal he sings about "The edge of time" on a "Misty morning".
From here the song transfers to a nice mid-tempo pace with Bill Ward joining in and Iommi switching to a distorted tone. Wards drumming isn't as full of life as it was on "Neon Knights" and there isn't really anything on display here to make it a standout performance. There are some nice fills here and there but overall it is a pretty subdued drum track. Butler drives the rhythm section, adding tasty fills with a thick, gritty tone. Overall the bass is much more present on this track as Iommi's guitars are less dense than they were on "Neon Knights".
Iommi delivers a nice bluesy riff at the start of the breakdown, and then things get really interesting when a choir reminiscent of the one from "Supertzar" off of Sabotage shows up and add an epic feel to the track. Iommi than tears through some really fluid lines over a syncopated rhythm.
Post solo there are some "UFO" effects and a nice use of chimes. As I listened to the song I couldn't help but think of how cinematic the lyrics for these Dio Sabbath songs have been. How a producer hasn't optioned a song or two to turn into a movie is beyond me. Ultimately I guess that no movie could do justice to the images created in the head as Dio sings about the "Sun going black" and how "It's never coming back".
Tune in tomorrow for "Lady Evil"!
2 comments:
It took me a while to warm up to this track when I first got the album, but I like it a lot now. The acoustic guitar parts are really cool and I like how it goes from soft to heavy and back again.
As for using some Dio era Sabbath in movies they did use the song "The Mob Rules" in the movie Heavy Metal and the scene fits the song pretty well.
I just watched Heavy Metal last night! How cool would an animated anthology be based on Sabbath songs?
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