Tyr (album)

Did You Know?

• The only track from Tyr to feature on post-Tyr tours was "Anno Mundi", appearing on the Cross Purposes Live VHS/DVD.
• Tony Martin re-recorded "Jerusalem" for his 1992 solo album Back Where I Belong.
• Heri Joensen of the Viking metal band Týr claims the album cover influenced his own band's logo.

Album information

The album was recorded at Woodcray Studios in February 1990, produced by Tony Iommi and Cozy Powell. According to Iommi's 2012 autobiography, the lyrics for the previous album Headless Cross had been too overtly Satanic, so for Tyr the band asked vocalist Tony Martin to be more subtle, resulting in lyrics about Nordic gods. The album was originally intended to be titled Satanic Verses but was changed to Tyr to distance it from the dark themes of its predecessor.

Tyr represents a dramatic departure from Black Sabbath's traditional sound, with only traces of it in occasional riffs. The production has drawn criticism for Cozy Powell's drums overpowering other instruments, while others praise it as one of the band's heaviest albums and the most reliant on keyboards by Geoff Nicholls. The song "Feels Good to Me" was included solely as a single and does not fit musically with the rest of the record; it was performed only once, on the first show of the tour on 1 September 1990.

The Tyr tour comprised around 50 shows and did not extend beyond the UK and Europe. Geezer Butler, Ian Gillan, and Brian May made guest appearances during the European leg, notably at the Hammersmith Odeon in London on 8 September 1990. In Norse mythology, Týr is the god of single combat and heroic glory, son of Odin. The runes on the cover—ᛏ, ᛉ, and ᚱ—are taken from the Rök runestone in Sweden; the middle rune, algiz, is transcribed as x or z, not y.