From the Dark

It all started with perfume. <b>Tony Iommi</b> was working on instrumental tracks for Xerjoff, the luxury fragrance brand, when he decided to write a new album. The Italian perfume house was producing two new scents in collaboration with Black Sabbath’s legendary guitarist: the Tony Iommi Monkey Special and Tony Iommi Deified. The music would appear in ads for the cologne, in which Xerjoff founder Sergio Momo would be playing guitar alongside the master. “I thought I’d do an album of instrumentals,” Iommi tells Apple Music. “After I did three or four, I changed my mind. I wanted to do a vocal album with a full band.” The result is <i>From the Dark</i>, a classic-sounding heavy metal album featuring Norwegian vocalist <b>Jørn Lande</b>, Mercyful Fate bassist Becky Baldwin and Robbie Williams’ drummer Karl Brazil. Iommi first joined forces with Lande in 2010 at the High Voltage Festival in London, where the singer joined him, Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler, Dio/Sabbath drummer Vinny Appice and former Sabs/Deep Purple singer Glenn Hughes for a special tribute to former Sabbath/Heaven & Hell vocalist Ronnie James Dio, who had passed a couple of months prior. “I like his voice, I like his approach, and he’s a nice guy,” Iommi says of Lande. “It was a no-brainer.” That same year, Lande recorded and released a Dio tribute album, appropriately titled <i>Dio</i>. It comes as no surprise, then, that <i>From the Dark</i> harkens back to Sabbath’s electrifying Dio era, which produced the revered albums <i>Heaven and Hell</i> (1980) and <i>Mob Rules</i> (1981). “Jørn sings very much in the same style as Ronnie,” Iommi says. “He’s got the same sort of aggression, and that’s what I really liked about him. And he’s not copying Ronnie; it’s just the way he is. That’s his voice. That’s his approach. He really knows how to put things over.” Lande wrote his own lyrics for the record, which was Iommi’s intent from the start. “I believe it’s best to leave the singer to do his thing,” Iommi says. “Otherwise, it’d be like him telling me what to play on guitar. He knows what his capabilities are and what he’s singing about, and that’s what I wanted. I wanted him to be able to really put the passion into it instead of singing somebody else’s lyrics.” The heavy and infectious <b>“World Alone”</b> was released as the first single, which sounds a bit like Sabbath’s “The Mob Rules”. “I’d think it would, because I wrote ‘The Mob Rules’, and it’s the same style of playing and approach,” Iommi says. “It’s an uptempo one, and a bit of a shorter track when compared to some of the others. And it’s more, I suppose, instant. As soon as you hear it, it’s up.” Iommi says his favourite track is album closer <b>“Legacy”</b>, a doomy track that sees Lande channelling Whitesnake vocalist David Coverdale with lyrics written about Iommi himself. “I didn’t know that until he mentioned it in an interview,” the guitarist says. “But that’s not why I like it. I just like the feel of it, and it has some nice movements.”