Here's my opinion -

FINALLY - There is an OFFICIAL Black Sabbath website.
http://www.blacksabbath.com/

For years, this 'fan site' has served as the closest thing to such
http://www.black-sabbath.com/news/

Well....I totally see the point of this in a ton of ways. But I would liken this site more to the official Taco Bell or McDonald's site before I'd liken it to any band. There is a need for this. Certainly. The older I get, the more I see a need for anything associated with money, property, and so forth. Not trying to hate either. Not taking anyone's side. Black Sabbath has been my favorite band for almost 30 years. It's been nice to see them get their due in the last 15 of those years. Seeing the original line-up play at Ozzfest was fantastic. I loved every second of it. "Born Again" was the current release when I got into them. I'd always wished they'd done another with Ian Gillan. But, yeah, I guess it was a bit of an odd fit. And until they reunited with Ozzy they were treading water much of the time it seemed. Not because the material was bad ("Forbidden" was pretty bad), but they were really never viewed as being contemporary, or 'current' by the public at large. "Seventh Star" was a little hard to get into at first, but now I look at it as a gem. The Tony Martin albums (other than "Forbidden") all contain some good songs with "Headless Cross" being a bona-fide classic. How can any of that be ignored? I haven't even mentioned the Dio era stuff. R.I.P. to Ronnie James Dio. R.I.P. to Cozy Powell. There's at least as much greatness without Ozzy Osbourne in the band. It just wasn't as groundbreaking. I totally support Black Sabbath and would love to see them play again. And yes, the original line-up will always be the most classic, which this website is devoted to. Now to my point - Without Bill Ward there is no original line-up. Business is business. Not gonna take a side between Bill and the rest of the band. But without it being THE original line-up on hand, it feels like even more of a slap in the face to everything which has been 'omitted' here.

Chattanooga - It's not too shabby pt. I

I like many other things, but my love for metal started in 1983. Back then you had hard rock and you had heavy metal. Oh sure, the NWOBHM had more or less run it's course and there were these newer, more extreme bands out. And any toddler could count past the number of people aware of that in Chattanooga. The best record store in town was Paradise (which would later become Cat's) located on Brainerd Rd (close to where the Big Lots is now). They had a nice Import section where you could find stuff like Venom, Raven, etc. (Record Bar at Eastgate was the hipper place to buy records and tapes). You might see an advertisement for Metallica or Anthrax in the back of Hit Parader magazine. But metal was cool, regardless. Ozzy Osbourne was just so evil in the eyes of the general public. And if you listened to Black Sabbath you pretty well had a damn secret altar to Satan himself somewhere in your room. The cover of Born Again was a testimony  to that. A lot of the big tours came thru town at either the UTC Arena or Memorial Auditorium. Seeing Armored Saint/Whitesnake/Quiet Riot in 1984 will always be a fond memory for me. I don't know about a local metal scene at the time as I've never been in a band myself.