Former BLACK SABBATH Singer TONY MARTIN Says 'Forbidden' Album 'Didn't Really Work'

Peter Hodgson of Gibson.com recently conducted an interview with former BLACK SABBATH singer Tony Martin. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Gibson.com: What are your proudest individual BLACK SABBATH lyrical and vocal moments? "Cross Purposes", in particular, is an album that I find myself listening to for the lyrics just as much as for the songs and performances.

Tony Martin: Yeah. I can see why you may pick up on that one. I was gettin' a bit more real with lyrics instead of historical. But I actually invented some words, and to this day, only one person has found them and questioned me about them. I challenge anyone to find them, but everyone sings them. It's those things that I find really interesting.

Gibson.com: How did you feel about your work on [BLACK SABBATH's] "Forbidden"?

Tony Martin: Well, "Forbidden" is I want to say "crap," but it's actually not. The songs worked really well in rehearsals, and then things started to get political, and I got wind of an Ozzy reunion [with SABBATH] not from SABBATH directly, of course. But before that came, there was a meeting at the SABBATH offices in London to which we were summoned to discuss the possibility of doing a RUN-D.M.C. type of album. I thought it wouldn't work, and voiced that. Cozy Powell [late BLACK SABBATH drummer] thought it wouldn't work. I was never sure that most of the others were convinced, but we were kinda steered into a "rap SABBATH" album. Then I was told that [rapper] Ice-T was gonna be doing it and they couldn't or wouldn't tell me if he was doing the whole thing or just one track... and I still didn't know the answer to that when I was in the studio singing the tracks. They said they were gonna take it and see what Ice-T wanted to do. So it has a distinct ill feeling about it. The album eventually didn't really work, although some fans love it. And it was the penultimate album to my being removed from the band, the last album to be released being "Sabbath Stones", a compilation album, which kept my name in the band to span 10 years and six albums.

Gibson.com: How is your new project with bassist Magnus Rosn (HAMMERFALL),guitarist Andy La Rocque (KING DIAMOND) and drummer Danny "Dant" Needham (VENOM, TONY MARTIN) going? What's it sound like? Will you tour?

Tony Martin: Well, we are all doing individual projects and other things right now. We are talking often about how we progress, but until we have finished our current projects, we can't really get it on the road. The plan is to release the music in a controlled way that will be different to the normal record-label release. We have two songs written that sound very unique and we are excited about those. It's very accessible dark rock.

Read the entire interview from Gibson.com.