Black Sabbath: Live Evil Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		0.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Black Sabbath: Live Evil Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 4, 2024

Some fans who know about the fractious history of Black Sabbath in and around the time of this album's recording may have been tempted lately to say, "Hey, Jane's Addiction, hold my beer", or something similar. If there was trouble a-brewin' not all that far beneath the surface, it might be hard to tell based on this often viscerally powerful live album, which was culled from various concerts in Seattle, San Antonio and Dalls utilizing the Record Plant's mobile recording service. As fans of this band will probably already know, there had been a prior unauthorized bootleg live album put out, and some of the "family discord" involving Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne and Black Sabbath evidently at least helped to convince the remaining band members that they needed to release their own "official" live record.

The album's track list can be seen in the screenshots of the disc menu I've uploaded to accompany this review.

Black Sabbath: Live Evil Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Black Sabbath: Live Evil is presented on audio Blu-ray courtesy of Rhino Music, and while there is an AVC encoded 1:78:1 "image", this is another Rhino release that features a static menu. Somewhat similarly to Rhino's release of Seal, albeit with different colors, the track playing highlights in purple, and if you use your arrow buttons to move through the tracks, the titles turn yellow as you move down the list (until one is chosen, at which point it changes to purple), but otherwise there are no "moving parts". Unfortunately this is one of the Rhino releases that does not allow for easy toggling between audio codecs with the colored buttons on your remote, so you may need to have your monitor or display on for this release. Also unfortunately, and in another example of a certain inconsistency Rhino brings to their disc authoring, changing audio codecs starts the song over.

Black Sabbath: Live Evil Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Black Sabbath: Live Evil features either Dolby Atmos or DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 options. The stereo mix is certainly vibrant and well balanced, but the Atmos track offers a probably more accurate accounting of the ambience of a live performance. A bit of patience needs to be exercised one way or the other, since "E5150" takes a few seconds to really get going, but the opening "whistle" sound and slowly encroaching roar of the audience is one indication of the spaciousness and immersion the Atmos track offers. While Dio's voice can waft above the onslaught of the instruments, kind of interestingly it really doesn't emanate from the Atmos speakers with any regularity. The midrange and low end is excellent throughout, though this entire mix sounded a bit anemic in amplitude, and I actually had to turn my receiver up a bit to really enjoy the full force of the music. This is also another Atmos mix, kind of like Chicago IX: Chicago's Greatest Hits '69-'74, that seemed to devote a lot of hall/arena ambience to the rear channels, rather than any significant actual music. Some of this may admittedly stem from some well publicized complaints about the original engineering on the recording.

Black Sabbath: Live Evil Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no on disc supplements. The keepcase features a sleeve with an inner print, and encloses a smallish booklet that reproduces the original album credits and art.

Black Sabbath: Live Evil Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I encourage those interested to do a bit of internet sleuthing about what was going on with the Osbournes, Black Sabbath and Don Arden (Sharon's dad and the band's manager) in and around this period, as it has the makings of a great film, maybe by someone like Cameron Crowe. This album has some great material, and extremely energetic performances. While the Atmos track is generally immersive, I found amplitude a little anemic and the tendency to weight things toward the front noticeable. With caveats noted, Recommended.