Tony Iommi has returned with a new, doom-laden instrumental track, Deified – and he's launched another new fragrance to mark the occasion.
The release finds the heavy metal pioneer repeating his feat of three years ago, when he unveiled Scent Of Dark – his first new music in eight years at the time – alongside an accompanying cologne.
Deified is littered with Iommi’s signature dark melancholia, with thick, slow-motion riffs trading off screaming blues-y leads. An emphatic choir and purring, orchestral strings add an extra thump of cinema to the instrumental track. It arrives after Iommi teased “really good”, orchestra-laced new material at the start of the year.
The track also sees Iommi reunite with long-time collaborator Mike Exeter, who played keyboards and handled production, with Laurence Cottle (who played on Black Sabbath’s Headless Cross record) on bass. The band is rounded out by Feeder and Robbie Williams drummer Karl Brazil, with Ben Andrews scoring the sweeping orchestrations.
Asked what he was looking for in his assembled band as part of an accompanying interview video, Iommi said: “Good players, which I know they are. Laurence is a fantastic jazz player, he can adapt to all sorts of music. Karl Brazil is the same. Mike is an all-rounder.”
Of the song itself, Iommi says: “Deified is a heavier, more medieval track than Scent Of Dark. We've added voices and beefed up the overall sound."
At the time of Scent Of Dark’s release, Iommi teased he had “four or five hundred” unused riffs on his phone, with one of those cuts making their way onto this sludgy affair.
Thankfully, unlike Kirk Hammett, who lost a phone containing 300 Metallica riffs, Iommi has kept hold of those ideas and has slowly been hammering them into shape.
The new song releases alongside a new “leather and spice” fragrance from Iommi, made in collaboration with Xerjoff Blends.
Sergio Momo, the firm's CEO, is an electric guitar player in his own right, and helped with the song’s creation, Iommi reveals.
“I put the main riff down and Sergio came up with these other parts that were really good and I wouldn't have done,” he says. “He looked at it in a different way.”
Head to Xerjoff to learn more about the collaborative new fragrance.
