Former Black Sabbath singer Tony Martin spoke to Niclas Müller-Hansen of RockSverige about the Anno Domini: 1989-1995 box set and also about the possibility of working with his former bandmate Tony Iommi.
When asked if he was involved in putting together the box set, Martin answered: “No, I had nothing to do with putting it together. They did tell me that they were going to do it and I put a few suggestions forward of what we could possibly have on it. Some of the missing material that I´ve got that hadn´t been used before, but they couldn´t do that because of the contract thing so they couldn´t really have anything considered ‘new Black Sabbath’ so they had to concentrate on what they already had. They did tell me, but they did it all themselves, Iommi and his engineers and they did a really good job with it.
“I went round to his house a few months ago and just sitting there listening it was ‘Bloody hell, sounds really good!’ And even Forbidden, they remixed it and that sounds like it´s grown up, become an adult. They sound like Sabbath songs should sound now. It´s more guitar based and slightly less keyboard, but it´s Sabbathy sounding.”
Speaking about working with Iommi again, he says, “I would and I´ve already said that if he felt like doing something I´d be up for it. I don´t think Tony is really… what´s the word… I think he´s come to the end of his need to do things. He doesn´t need to do this stuff. As you get older and he had that problem with the cancer thing. He´s definitely not interested in touring really. He could do the odd appearance, but he doesn´t need to, so I don´t know. I´d like to, but it´s one of these things… whilst everybody´s still alive, there´s always a possibility. I mean, they could still get Bill Ward back in the band and start again, in theory. Once people start passing along you can´t sort of do that anymore. I´ve already said that I wouldn´t mind doing something if they were interested. We´ll see how it goes.”
