Black Sabbath – Past Lives (2002)

April 24, 2024

I’d originally written off Past Lives for being the “official” version of Live At Last but with a bunch of extra shit added onto the end. In some rather dim world views that is perhaps correct, but Past Lives is so much more than that, as I have recently found out. Yes, disc 1 is the same as the Live At Last album so if you’ve heard that, there’s no point in bothering with the first disc at all, really.

The reward really comes with disc 2, which is a collection of live tracks that were previously only released in bootleg configurations. Whether those bootlegs have cooler art, release notes etc., I am not here to argue, but Past Lives collects these sessions together in one place and over its two-hour run time I suppose it could be argued that it makes a definitive “classic” Sabbath live album. Some of the sessions on the second disc are just incredible, such as the versions here of “Hole In The Sky”, “Symptom Of The Universe” and “Black Sabbath”.

Great stuff.