Black Sabbath’s box set ‘Anno Domini 1989-1995’ to be released on May 31st
Great news for fans of Black Sabbath‘s Tony Martin era as four of the band’s five studio albums that feature him on lead vocals — Headless Cross (1989), Tyr (1990), Cross Purposes (1994) and Forbidden (1995) — will finally be released as the box set Anno Domini 1989-1995 via BMG and Rhino on May 31, 2024. Forbidden has been especially remixed by band founder / guitarist Tony Iommi while the three other studio records have been remastered.
Track List for Disc 1 – Headless Cross (2024 Remaster):
01. The Gates of Hell
02. Headless Cross
03. Devil & Daughter
04. When Death Calls
05. Kill In The Spirit World
06. Call of The Wild
07. Black Moon
08. Nightwing
09. Clark and Dagger
Track List for Disc 2 – Tyr (2024 Remaster):
01. Anno Mundi
02. The Law Maker
03. Jerusalem
04. The Sabbath Stones
05. The Battle of Tyr
06. Odin’s Court
07. Valhalla
08. Feels Good T0 Me
09. Heaven In Black
Track List for Disc 3 – Cross Purposes (2024 Remaster):
01. I Witness
02. Cross of Thorns
03. Psychophobia
04. Virtual Death
05. Immaculate Deception
06. Dying For Love
07. Back To Eden
08. The Hand That Rocks The Cradle
09. Cardinal Sin
10. Evil Eye
11. What’s The Use
Track List for Disc 4 – Forbidden (2024 Tony Iommi Remix):
01. The Illusion of Power
02. Get A Grip
03. Can’t Get Close Enough
04. Shaking off The Chains
05. I Won’t Cry For You
06. Guilty As Hell
07. Sick and Tired
08. Rusty Angels
09. Forbidden
10. Kiss of Death
11. Loser Gets It All
In an interview with Jimmy Kay for Canada’s The Metal Voice, Martin revealed how the box set came to fruition. Martin indicated (as provided by The Metal Voice with slight edits):
“I have been wanting this for a long time, just as you have and the fans have. Unfortunately, I’m not in the band so I have no part in the decision making or the politics. So I had to kind of sit and twiddle my thumbs [wait]. So I didn’t have any role to play in it. They were thinking about it some years ago but because of all the band politics and the contracts and the amount of people that are involved, they had to get agreements. About a year ago, they called me and said ‘We can’t do it. It’s just too complicated. There’s too many people [involved] demanding this and that and we just can’t get it together.’ So a few months after that, they called me again and said ‘Do you know what? Things have changed and so we think we’re going to get this thing going after all.’ And BMG, the record label, picked it up and they’ve been so patient and they ran with it so it sort of started to happen really quite quickly after.
The remix of [the album] Forbidden, Tony [Iommi] did with his engineers. I had no role to play in that either but they’ve done a great job. Then he [Tony Iommi] invited me to come down and listen to it some months ago and I was just blown away. So once they’d got over the initial problems of contracts and agreements and band politics and all the rest of the crap that goes on it, it kind of happened quite quickly and here we are now with the whole box set thing in your hand and wow, it’s a thing. I was really pleased obviously cause you know it was like 10 years of my life, 10 years of the Sabbath story that was missing. Well, it was missing in the physical sense. It wasn’t missing in the fans’ minds. People remembered it and you know over the past 25 years, people have always talked to me about it but they just couldn’t buy it. They just couldn’t get their hands on it and I might say just that neither could I. [It’s] the first time I’ve actually physically held these albums in my hand in like 25 years cause I gave all mine away thinking that I would get some more and then they stopped making it and I couldn’t so [to] actually physically hold them myself is great as well.”
You can listen to the interview with Tony Martin on The Metal Voice below:
Black Sabbath‘s “Headless Cross” album: