The Black Sabbath Story, Vol. 2 (2002)

After Ozzy Osbourne's departure for a wildly popular solo career, his bandmates soldiered on, and this second volume of The Black Sabbath Story continues the saga from 1980 to the mid-'90s. And what a saga it was: American belter Ronnie James Dio--direct from Rainbow--replaced Osbourne, followed by a short-lived Ian Gillan, etc. Dio and original guitarist Tony Iommi gobble up the bulk of volume 2's interview footage, with the remainder of this too-brief (45 minutes) chronicle taken up by several videos and performance clips like "Die Young" and "Neon Knights" (from the first record with Dio) and the late-'80s pop-metal of "Feels Good to Me."

Since Black Sabbath never again reached the heights of their mid-'70s glory days, there's a brief sense of letdown during volume 2, especially when the videos venture dangerously close to "hair band" territory. But throughout, the group has kept its perspective, even developing a sense of humor usually buried by its notoriously dark music. --Kevin Filipski Amazon.com

How many people were in sabbath ?

I just got this. I'm a huge Black Sabbath fan as well as a Dio fan. I thought there would be a lot of good stuff from that period.


There was some, but not enough.

Most of it was interviews from people I didn't know were in the band.

Part 1 of the Black Sabbath story was awsome. This part falls far short. October 19, 2007

Good stuff on the history of sabbath, part 2 of the collection

I have had this tape for almost 10 years now, and nothing has come along that even gets close to the material on this tape. It is now available on DVD. One difference with the DVD is that Volume 2 starts with the dio years, whereas the VHS starts with "a hard road" and the end of the Ozzy years, which the DVD collection put on volume one. This set covers the Dio years and the post Dio years with Ian Gillen, Glenn hughes, and Tony Martin, ending with the return of Dio and the Dehumanizer album. This set was put out originally at the time of the release of the dehumanizer album, unfortunately Sabbath was pretty well depleted in popularity at that time. So this is a must have for the sabbath fans. I just wish they would release at some point a volume three, to include the post De-humanizer years and the reunion, I'll keep my fingers crossed. July 26, 2006

Black Sabbath - 'Black Sabbath Story,Volume Two' (Sanctuary Entertainment)

From viewing this DVD for the first time,I can NOW remember WHY I don't usually flip over that many DVD releases.I mean,this Story Of Black Sabbath is like a bad joke.It's got some good footage,but it should have had much more of Dio and Ian Gillan.Never cared for vocalist Tony Martin at all,but the clip here for "Headless Cross" isn't half bad.As for the songs performed with Dio,which were "Die Young","Neon Knights" and "TV Crimes",they should have completely edited the interview DURING the dang song!Those first two,I believe I saw them on Don Kirshner way back when.A total of 45 minutes of the music segment,plus several 'waste of time' extras.For Sabbath die-hards and completists only.Sure glad this DVD didn't cost me much. June 5, 2006

Beware of false widescreen!!

The black bars on this video do not represent a widescreen ratio, but are simply black bars put in a full screen ratio because they want people to think it's widescreen. You can tell by comparing this dvd to the original fullscreen vhs tape that it's bogus. This sort of scam isn't unheard of in the industry, but it sucks that it had to happen here.
As far as the video length argument goes, I believe they are including the duration of the extra features into that. The dvd case says 85 minutes. The main feature runs 50 minutes and there are about 30 minutes of extras so there's no cause for alarm. We aren't getting scammed on time, just on the screen!!
I wanted to mention something that I found last night which I believe could be called an easter egg of sorts. When you flip through the discography menu, there is a link to the video from each album that is represented in this collection. The last album, Dehumanizer, isn't represented by a music video but there are segments of the recording process shown, a brief live clip of "I", as well as a photo session. These clips are readily accessible through the main menu. However, there is a second icon next to the "TV Crimes" song which takes you to what appears to be general miscellany: studio stuff, pool playing, outtakes from the photo session segment, and so on that isn't featured in the main program or the primary extras. Here's the interesting part: During the first part of this "hidden" footage, you can hear a repeated chant in the background that sounds like "Satan is great". It's just a couple people's voices quietly repeating throughout that first portion of the segment for no apparent purpose, then the scene changes to Tony laying down basic tracks for "TV Crimes".
Just something you might want to check out.


July 5, 2005

I Agree that it Could Have Been Done Better...

...but it's still not bad. I bought THE BLACK SABBATH STORY, VOL. 2 at the same time as VOL. 1, and I did think right away that it was kind of weird that the 50-minute VOL. 2 sported 12 songs, while the 60-minute VOL. 1 had 10. Well, it is unfotunately true that most of the videos shown on VOL. 2 are truncated, which is too bad because most of these songs are very good.

You know, every time people counted out Black Sabbath, they always came back with good material, no matter who sung for them. Hey, there were millions who thought that the Sabs were done when Ozzy left the band in 1978. But they came roaring right back with Ronnie James Dio in 1980, and put out two studio albums and their first-ever live album in the early 80's. Then Dio left in an acrimonious split, and former Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gillan took over for one album which, unfortunately, was poorly received. Then the whole David Donato misfire occurred (a male model with no previous professional singing experience, he was basically brought in for looks and nothing else, till he was fired by the band after three weeks due to his arrogance), after which Black Sabbath officially broke up, for the very first time in history. For the very first time, it seemed right to count out Black Sabbath for good. However, a very interesting thing happened: Tony Iommi wanted to do a solo album, which upset Warner Brothers, who didn't want to give up the Black Sabbath ghost as much as Black Sabbath itself! When Tony assembled a band that included former Ozzy bassist Bob Daisley and former Trapeze & Deep Purple bassist/vocalist Glenn Hughes on lead vocals, Warner got cold feet and demanded that the finished product be released under the moniker "Black Sabbath Featuring Tony Iommi," rather than just under Iommi's own name. The result was the terrific SEVENTH STAR, which produced Black Sabbath's first Top 50 hit since "Paranoid," a great power ballad called "No Stranger To Love." Unfortunately, Glenn Hughes, who sang his heart out on the album, had fallen into cocaine addiction, and didn't last the tour. After briefly hooking up with up & coming New York-bred metallist Ray Gillen to finish out the tour, Black Sabbath got a dependable, and also virtually unknown, singer by the name of Tony "The Cat" Martin, who lasted for three albums from 1987-1991, till the Sabs reunited with Dio for the excellent album DEHUMANIZER (1992).

This is the basic rundown of the many turns & twists in the career of the ever-adapting Black Sabbath from 1978 to 1992. it is fascinating; unfortunately, this video is so short that it has no time to dwell on any particular part of it. The result feels very rushed. However, it is still worthy to add it to your Black Sabbath video collection, as long as you don't spent too much money on it (Try Amazon Marketplace, or E-Bay). It does provide some very good interviews with some of the band members, such as Tony Iommi, Bill Ward, Cozy Powell and Ian Gillan. I particularly liked Gillan's segment the best; as much of a vocal legend as this man is, he makes no bones about the fact that he didn't really fit in well as a Black Sabbath singer, even going so far as to say, "I was probably the worst Black Sabbath singer ever," with a laugh. I can't agree with that; however, I can sure appreciate the unselfish sentiment represented by the statement. He does acknowledge that there were some very strong songs on BORN AGAIN (1983); unfortunately, we only hear brief snippets of the two best songs, "Trashed" and "Zero The Hero," from this much-unfairly maligned album. We also get not enough of the videos for the great Dio songs like "Die Young" as well as "T.V. Crimes" and "I" from the 1992 reunion.

Sure, it's not the best Black Sabbath video, and it was obviously done to cash-in on the Dio reunion in that year. But for us die-hard Black Sabbath fans, it's worth it!

RECOMMENDED FOR BLACK SABBATH FANS ONLY May 8, 2004

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