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Iommi/Hughes reissues
The two Tony Iommi/Glenn Hughes albums — The Dep Sessions and Fused, will be reissued October 4, 2024, via BMG. The Dep Sessions will be issued as-is, while Fused will add 3 bonus tracks not on the original album: Slip Away, Let It Down Easy, and The Innocence. Both will be available on CD and, for the first time, on vinyl. Pre-orders available here.
Thanks to BraveWords for the info.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Both of these are fine albums.I won’t be re-buying them,but if you don’t own them….Dig in !
August 4th, 2024 at 21:32FUSED? I never liked it,
August 5th, 2024 at 09:46a jumble of hormones and that’s it, nothing more.
They weren’t badly made, but Tony’s doom & gloom riffs + chords versus Glenn’s penchant for RnB’ish minor/major, sevenths and ninths + fourths are not a natural mix for me.
When Gillan isn’t around, Tony sounds best with his old buddy (or an AI pretending to be him!).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3Ob3_s4PXw
August 5th, 2024 at 16:34I have always loved the Dep Sessions ’96 since its release in 2004 – it’s still my favourite Hughes / Iommi collaboration. Initially I was somewhat disappointed with Fused, but over time it has grown on me….it is generally a much heavier and more riff -oriented album than Dep Sessions. Both have their charms and are well worth listening to / purchasing. Those new bonus tracks on Fused are certainly beckoning to me….I’ll probably get that new re-release.
August 5th, 2024 at 17:23Erasing Dave Holland’s original drum tracks was a cheap shot and historical revisionism.
Or will he be reinstated for the upcoming release?
August 5th, 2024 at 23:12I never cared for GH. I never liked the dual vocal idea in Purple.
August 6th, 2024 at 00:42I tried to listen to the California Jam cd. When he was introducing Smoke On The Water and kept stammering over the name of the album, Machine Head, naturally, I disliked him even more. I hadnt listened to California Jam in quite a few years.
This on top of all his whining about the shock hall bs and him dressed like Beetlejuice really irked me. So Im really not interested in these albums. I did try to listen to the clips but thought they sounded like crap(not the word I wanted to use.)
Both great albums. As is Seventh Star. So when are Tony & Glenn going to do another one? Or (dare I say it) a tour?
August 6th, 2024 at 02:39You and your kindred evil spirit Gregster should really marry, David! 😘
I’m to Glenn what Swifties are to Taylor (and that Beetlejuice suit was très chic and really livened up the RRHoF stage with some flamboyance!), but I’ve never been a great fan of his collaborations with Iommi (all three of them). It seems to be more an incestuous Birmingham attraction to one another rather than musical compatibility per se. Iommi is lots of things, but one thing he’s definitely not: funky. And whenever Glenn commits to unfunky music, he’s selling himself short. I would have liked for Glenn to do a project with Prince rather than Tony Iommi of all people! 😁 Or with Nile Rodgers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zck2eerSzC4
But the two seem to genuinely like each other, so more power to them.
August 6th, 2024 at 16:17THE7thSTAR is one om my favourite album. I find that here GH gives the best of him.
August 6th, 2024 at 16:29I love that times when I get Perfect Strangers and The7hStar..
I agree with Uwe in regards to the post 1980’s Iommi & Hughes collaborations. I just listened to the Dep sessions again after many years. It still sounds like they were trying to remain 90’s relevant for me, i.e, a Soungarden sort of vibe to it. Plus I don’t like the way Hughes sings compared to how he used to sing. The same as the Fused album, the songs don’t work & Hughes ‘forced’ whiny vocal style at times annoys me. He never sang like that back in the day. The other thing that it reminds me of in a certain ‘hard rock’ way is BCC. Very similar attempt to get into genres that they both don’t really fit into, if that makes any sense at all. Iommi trying to be ‘Grunge’ & ‘Industrial’ etc & Bonamassa trying to be hard classic rock, which he isn’t. Anyway it is the old horses for courses again. I still really like The Seventh Star album, a wonderful ‘solo’ album it is & was meant to be. Something different at the time for Iommi. How much did Glenn Hughes have to do with the songwriting on ST? Not a lot I could imagine, unlike the two collaboration albums that followed. No harm in trying though. To see if there is anything worthwhile there. The fact that the ‘bands’ DEP, Fused & also BCC never tour says something to me. Cheers.
August 7th, 2024 at 00:53@ 5 – I agree totally Uwe, Iommi hanging around the O$Bourne’s too much. Erasing past musicians original recordings is a violation indeed. Tony is a softy & that is a good thing personality wise, a nice chap he is. However that can often lead to other people possibly manipulating a situation & whoever it was that wormed their way into Iommi’s thoughts at that point, well enough said there. It seems like he has made a few decisions over the decades that were not the correct ones & the end result shows that sometimes certain things could have been handled much better. I am holding back commenting on the replaced drum parts as many here have ‘probably’ had enough of me banging on about drum sounds etc. Although there is NO guarantee that I will not comment in the future on such matters (don’t sigh or roll your eyes). Cheers.
August 7th, 2024 at 01:13I haven’t listened to Fused in a while but Wasted Again and I Go Insane were my favourite tracks. Between the Dep Sessions,Fused and Seventh Star there is enough solid material for a set list. I would like to see Tony and Glenn do a short run of live shows together to promote the re-release of the Dep Sessions and Fused.
August 7th, 2024 at 06:50I don’t think the bonus tracks are “new”, but at least one never on CD before.
August 7th, 2024 at 12:08– Let it Down Easy was a bonus on track the Japanese edition of Fused and later included on the WhoCares album
– Slip Away was a bonus track on the Real.com edition of Fused and later included on the WhoCares album
– The Innocence was a bonus track on the iTunes version of Fused.
I loved Fused when that was released, some great tracks on there. @12, Simon, my faves are the same as yours, agree it would be a great quick win UK Tour IMO
August 7th, 2024 at 12:52I’m probably so strict about the very conventional Seventh Star, because it followed the pleasantly “out there” Born Again, which saw Sabbath and Gillan forge something new/unheard until then. In contrast, Seventh Star sounds to me like a Dio era BS album sung by Glenn. Very safe. And I always found Ozzy era Sabbath more progressive and unconventional than Heaven & Hell and Mob Rules, fine albums they are.
Erasing Dave Holland from the DEP Sessions was of course owed to his sex offender conviction in 2003, Iommi wanted no affiliation with that. But irrespective of the fact that Holland’s conviction at the time raised a lot of questions and that post-trial new evidence cast many aspects of the alleged criminal act into serious doubt (as so often, DH had a lousy and inexperienced criminal defense team, a surprising fact given – of all bands – Judas Priest’s experience with successfully fighting allegations in court), wiping Dave’s work was the beginning of cancel culture already. Are we gonna stop listening to Phil Spector productions because of what he became (and did) or wipe Chuck Berry’s guitar off his songs because he had secretly cameras installed in the ladies’ restroom of one of his restaurants or Ike Turner’s work with Tina because of his abusive track record with her?
How Tony handled this is all the more interesting given his own history and experiences (mind you, by all accounts Lita in her Runaways days could be a very bullying presence to the other girls as well).
https://metalinjection.net/news/lita-ford-alleges-black-sabbaths-tony-iommi-physically-abused-her-during-their-marriage-in-new-tell-all-book
August 7th, 2024 at 13:33To me Seventh Star sounds nothing like anything before. Blues, ballads & good ‘standard’ rock songs. The only two songs that resemble a Sabbath tune are the opening song In For The Kill & the title track. Otherwise it is very different & not trying to be really heavy & dark etc. The fact that Glenn Hughes sings on it drags it even further away from Sabbath & there are no band members that had ever been associated with Iommi previously, excepting Geoff Nicholls. To me that is what a solo album should be, getting away from the behemoth hanging around the neck, so to speak. I think for me, including Forbidden & then everything following on, I had probably heard enough of Iommi’s riffs etc. I bought everything he or Sabbath did up until 1995 & liked most of it, still do. By the time I heard that solo album around 2000 that he did with all those other rock & metal singers I definitely put Iommi to one side. The Dep sessions & Fused reiterated that & also the Heaven & Hell album The Devil You Know, plus the 13 album. There is the odd song here & there that are ok, however those albums bore me to tears. It was still grand to witness both H & H & Sabbath live in concert. A nice way to finish off for both bands, excepting Bill Ward not being present at the Sabbath gigs. As for the Lita Ford thing, I had forgotten all about that. Cheers.
August 8th, 2024 at 04:22Except for the joint Birmingham heritage, it seemed to me like an extremely odd combination at the time – lead- and light-footed jumbled together. And then Glenn Hughes in just a lead singer role without his bass? That was to me like having Jack Bruce in Baker Bruce Moore/BBM as just the lead singer with an extra bassist added. At the end of the day, I like Glenn’s bass playing even more than his singing (and I like his singing better when he plays bass at the same time, it’s more rhythmically grounded then).
No matter, after a long hiatus following the Hughes Thrall album, any release with Glenn in the 80s was good news. And the version of No Stranger To Love that accompanied the video (very different to the album version which is half a minute longer) was definitely a highlight.
https://youtu.be/lgaUxFC1qcM
(Some vid versions feature the album mix though, sans Glenn’s ‘commercial’ backing vocal oohs and aahs:
https://youtu.be/UnOqoIOFSLc )
That blonde in the rather somber vid, I always took her to be intended as a representation of Ms Lita Ford. Never worked out though what crypto-sexual reference the Doberman Pinscher was supposed to transport, I guess we’ll have to ask ole fringe jacket for that.
August 8th, 2024 at 12:30The blonde woman in the video of stranger to love is Bing Crosby’s granddaughter Denise Crosby look it up.
August 8th, 2024 at 19:49I remember when the video came out, people asked who that was, and it was revealed that it was her. look her up. It’s her.
A embarrassing video if ever there was one. I do remember joking with a friend way back at that time 1986, that Iommi needed to get back to ole Blighty really quickly. Too much LA Connection going on there. Thanks for the alternative version, I have never heard that before, not a fan of the extra baking vocals though. The lady actor is Denise Crosby who’s paternal grandfather was non other than ……..(drum roll)…………..good ole Bing Crosby. How is that for a bit of excitement, not to mention the research involved, he he he. I am starting to get the hang of it all. Cheers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denise_Crosby
August 8th, 2024 at 22:52I’m proud of you two hobby paparazzi, it’s certainly a start.
Now what about the Doberman?
August 9th, 2024 at 17:50@ 20 – In regards to the Doberman dog, who I would love to give a name to, but will not go there. To me it probably represents freedom, running free as she casts off Iommi’s desperate clutches etc. The only other possibility is that she sent it to ‘get him’ he eh he. Around that time, I think it was The Eternal Idol release 1987 era & there was a cover story in Kerrang metal magazine with Iommi & that very look he has in this video on the front cover. Sab story was the headline. When a friend of mine noticed it at my abode he said, more like Sob story! We both laughed, especially me as I was well aware of both of poor Tony’s’ plights at that time. A girlfriend who dumped him & the Sabbath scenario & all that went with it. My friend was not aware of all the soap opera drama at all, he was just going off the image of Iommi. Says it all really. Cheers.
August 10th, 2024 at 23:43I would imagine that Tony’s missing finger tips – maybe the Doberman bit them off? – might be deemed lacking when involved in some more non-musical tactile activities, no? Not so nimble with that thimble.
August 11th, 2024 at 14:04I bought the “Fused” album when it first arrived when it was initially released 2005. I must admit i don’t mind vinyl & judging by the above photo it will be available for the 1st time on vinyl on the above date 4th October. As it’s a birthday month for me, do i revisit the album? Too early to judge at the moment.
August 11th, 2024 at 23:50@ 22- I was thinking more of Iommi’s nemesis at that time, or more to the point his nemesis other half. Ouch. Cheers.
August 12th, 2024 at 08:55Both among my favorite artists so I have to have these on vinyl! Can’t wait! Didn’t know about Dave Holland being replaced on DEP, hope he gets reinstated on this version. I did always think they could have put more effort into these. Seemed like it was just a lazy side project. But Iommi & Hughes, what’s not to love!
August 14th, 2024 at 00:58There were boots with Holland’s original drumming available long before the Dep Sessions came out officially. I don’t believe that he will be reinstated on the remaster, no one wants to bring up the subject of the teenage abuse allegations against him again.
That said, neither the Trapeze nor the Judas Priest discographies have been similarly cleansed of his contributions. Priest kind of sidestep the whole issue in interviews pretending there is no pink elephant in the room (he played on seven of their official releases from 1980-89), only Glenn continues to laud Dave’s funky drumming skills and states he simply can’t say what happened or did not happened, but that it seems unlikely for him from the Dave Holland he once knew.
August 14th, 2024 at 14:00I’ve just never been able to get in to ‘Dep’ or Fused.’ Some great riffs but Glenn’s vocals on the two albums leave me cold. I think it’s his odd phrasing at times, where he does his odd ‘cockney’ pronunciation one moment then over-emphasises the sibilance. In addition, he eschews vibrato quite a bit. It all felt somewhat lacking. Perhaps I am partly to blame, in that I’ve found Glenn’s vocals (particularly live) increasingly irritating over the years (and I never cared for the way both he and David murdered the Mark II material). Ultimately, I’ll give these two albums a miss (I don’t even listen to the two original CDs that I own).
August 15th, 2024 at 15:51Naw, I have to get the remasters (already ordered them) just as I get anything with Glenn. I only recently moved heaven and earth to get a Dead Daisies merchandise site-only EP that featured this otherwise unavailable track here:
https://youtu.be/eJ4DQ8Svk4U
August 15th, 2024 at 21:36