Zakk Sabbath – ‘Vertigo’ [Album Review]

You’re a wunderkind from the get-go. You work your ass off and get the keys to the city handed to you at an early age. You keep toiling, not resting on past glories. Then, one day, the boss and the music industry say your due date is up. So what do you do? You create your own successful brand and keep pilgriming relentlessly. Zakk-Fucking-Wylde–relentless-style without taking a break and paying homage to the masters of reality while forever venturing down the road of doom and gloom with a heavy fistful of metal.

Vertigo is the second opus from Zakk Sabbath, with the first being the three-track, 25:15 minute excursion known as Live in Detroit. This time around, we have an official studio recording that only contains five songs but holds all the condiments, leaving us with a mean, lean, king-crown special that cooks up at a hungry 41 minutes and 37 seconds.

All burgermeister and asperger aside, if you’re going to rip off Black Sabbath, I think it best you start with the self-titled track itself. If there’s one thing Wylde learned during his tenure with the prince of darkness, it was the ability to emulate Ozzy’s vocal. Satan definitely comes around the bend with a couple of hail Marys and “blessed are thous” thrown in during this sabbatical roundabout.

With Black Label Society taking a backseat, you’ll find solace in Zakk Sabbath, and the highlight of Vertigo is “Wicked World.” For those unfamiliar with obscure Sabbath, this will definitely ignite your sweetleaf onto an astral plane. Yet “Bit of Finger/Sleeping Village” will have you coming down, metamorphized by perfect-punch anesthesia. Wylde keeps this tribute true, and his pentatonic dementia steers clear of over laminating, keeping all wheels confusion-free and adrift like late-night Scooby snacks. If you drop the needle on Zakk Sabbath’s Vertigo you’ll find it usurps as expected without the old school renditions being sabotaged, and, hey, isn’t everything a lot cooler that way?

Vertigo Track Listing:

1. Black Sabbath
2. The Wizard
3. Wasp/Behind the Wall of Sleep/N.I.B.
4. Wicked World
5. A Bit of Finger/Sleeping Village/Warning

Run Time: 41:37
Release Date: September 4, 2020
Record Label: Magnetic Eye