Black Sabbath – Cross Purposes: Live (1995)

October 19, 2023

I have this DVD (bootleg) and it is actually a very good set. Recorded in 1994 and released in 1995, the line-up is Geezer and Tony, with Bobby Rondinelli on drums (I think this is when Cozy Powell was still recovering from accident with the horse). Tony Martin is back on vocals after a brief stint with Dio back in the band for one album. So we get Martin here performing songs by all eras of the band. You get rare performances of him singing recent Dio-era Dehumanizer stuff, as well as stuff from his own albums as well as earlier Dio and Ozzy stuff. It really is a great mix of all of their material.

Iommi looks coked off his nut, on some mad tunnel vision thing, and it sucks ass that they made Geoff Nicholls stand off the stage for this tour, but the sound is great. It’s really cool to have Geezer back in the band and despite the fact that Forbidden came not longer after this, I would have been very interested to see what this era of Black Sabbath would have produced had they not reunited with Ozzy and become permanently stuck as a legacy act.

Oh well.