Tony Iommi Releases ‘Stormwatcher’ Ahead Of New Solo Album ‘From The Dark’
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Tony Iommi’s latest solo single starts where you’d expect: with the riff.
The Black Sabbath guitarist has released ‘Stormwatcher’, the latest preview of From The Dark, his new album arriving October 23rd through BMG.
After ‘World Alone’ took Iommi into a dystopian retrofuture, ‘Stormwatcher’ heads out to sea.
The track is built around the image of a ship caught in a storm, with an animated video bringing vocalist Jørn Lande’s lyrics to life. Lande, who sings throughout From The Dark and shares writing credits across the album, sees the storm as something considerably bigger than bad weather.
“It channels something from within, something real,” Lande explains.
“We are the captain of our own vessel, a ship crashing through unknown and sometimes challenging waters, always navigating forward, steering steady through every storm, driven by dreams of new horizons and longing for something new.”
Tony Iommi ‘Stormwatcher’ video
A strong backing
Behind him, Iommi has kept the core of From The Dark relatively compact. Becky Baldwin handles bass, Karl Brazil is on drums, while longtime collaborator Mike Exeter co-produced the record alongside Iommi.
That leaves plenty of space for the thing people are coming to a Tony Iommi record for in the first place.
‘Stormwatcher’ is the fifth track on the eight-song standard edition and follows previous single ‘World Alone’. Rather than trying to drag Iommi’s sound somewhere unrecognisable, the material released so far has leaned into the weight, space and guitar tone that made him such a singular player to begin with.
The album will also arrive in an extensive run of physical editions, including several double-LP variants cut at 45rpm and a deluxe 32 page CD mediabook.
That deluxe CD adds two previously released Iommi tracks, ‘Scent Of Dark’ and ‘Deified’, to the standard album.
There probably aren’t many guitarists left who can make a riff immediately identifiable before the vocal has even arrived. Iommi can still do it.
With ‘Stormwatcher’, he doesn’t make listeners wait long to find out.
