Skip to content
- Cert:
/ 
- Cat.no: SDE 3003 / SDE 3004
- Running time: 65 / 47 minutes
- Year: 2002
- Pressing: 2002
- Region(s): All, PAL
- Chapters: 24 /
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: None
- Widescreen: 16:9
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 5 / DVD 5
- Price: £15.99 each
- Extras: Interviews, Band History, Album Gallery
Director:
- Martin Baker
Producer:
- Stephanie Bennett
The Black Sabbath Storymust be up there as one of those long-awaited DVDs since I first received thepress release and placed it online almost 17 months ago, on March 30th 2001.The original release date was May 21st last year, so as to coincide with thereunion of Sabbath’s original line-up at the Ozzfest in Milton Keynes just fivedays later. Quite why it’s taken all this time to come out hasn’t been explained,but I bet Sanctuary saw how well MTV’s The Osbournes has been receivedand saw fit to bring it out of the vaults now. I have to say I’m not a fan ofOzzy’s reality TV show as I just didn’t find it in the least bit interesting,despite enjoying many a docusoap on the goggle box.
Told in two parts, the first covering their early days in 1970 to Ozzy’sdeparture in 1978; and the second taking the band up to 1992, there’s a fairamount of info here mixed together with full-length Black Sabbath tracks takenfrom a variety of sources, all of which can be watched in chronological orderas the DVD alternates between music and chat, or you can elect to check outindividual soundbites or tunes from the individual chapter listings for eitherselection.
The Black Sabbath Story makes for a reasonably interesting experiencefor the casual viewer as their origins are discussed, the links with the occultand their jazz and blues influences, but while there’s chat from lead guitaristTony Iommi, bass guitarist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward,Disc 2 sees input from later members Ronnie James Dio, Vinnie Appice, Ian Gillanand Cozy Powell. Across both volumes, frontman Ozzy Osbourne isconspicuous by his absence which seems a rather large omission.
I think it would’ve been a better bet to release both discs as part of one2-disc boxset for around £20 than to put them out separately for near-enoughthat price each.
The music tracks on each DVD are as follows:
Disc One:
1. NIB
2. Paranoid
3. War Pigs
4. Children of the Grave
5. Snowblind
6. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
7. Symptom of the Universe
8. It’s Alright
9. Rock N Roll Doctor
10. Never Say Die
11. Hard Road
Disc Two:
1. Die Young
2. Neon Knights
3. Trashed
4. Zero the Hero
5. No Stranger To Love
6. The Shining
7. Headless Cross
8. Feels Good to Me
All the footage on the DVDs are presented in anamorphic 16;9 widescreen,although most, if not all, appears to actually have been made in 4:3 and thenzoomed in. Obviously all the archive music footage will be treated this way,but most of the interview footage looks a little unbalanced, visually, to havebeen shot and composed for 16:9 widescreen. The encoding isn’t all it couldbe in some sections, such as “Henry’s Blues House” in the band history extras,where the bottom half of the screen suffers from blocking which appears toshimmer across the screen. Not nice.
The sound is just as you’d expect it, although the addition of Dolby Digital5.1 doesn’t particularly benefit discs like these since the music that you’vecome to listen to wasn’t written with such technology in mind.
The extras on both discs are similar in structure and contain an Album Gallery,further Interviews with Tony Iommi and Bill Ward, plus a Band History section which looksat various aspects of the band’s existence with chat from the likes of drummerCozy Powell, Ian Gillan and ex-manager Jim Simpson. All of the extra featurescount for around an extra 30 minutes of content per disc.
There are no subtitles option for English, although the menus feature somecool animation to a background of eerie thunderclaps.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALLBuy this DVD fromBlackstar.co.uk
N.B.: This link takes you to Vol.1, but a subsequent link is available topurchase Vol.2
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.