Black Sabbath: Ranking Every Ozzy Osbourne Album From Worst To Best

9. Technical Ecstasy

This seventh offering from the original lineup, recorded at the arguable peak of their drug-addled indulgences and in a studio next door to the Eagles' Hotel California no less, is a cut above most post-Osbourne efforts - but its attempts to further broaden their sound is a tiresome mess.

The album isn't all limp-fisted flaccidity though; opener Back Street Kids rages hard, Bill Ward picked up a rare vocal spot with the ballad It's Alright and the climactic Dirty Women is one of the band's best closing cuts, popular enough to survive into their final live sets on The End Tour.

Still, its creative process showed the frayed edges of the band's psyche, as Iommi took on effective solo production while Osbourne began to seriously mull a career away from Sabbath. Butler later admitted that the record was the beginning of the end for the group's original lineup.

On stage, the Technical Ecstasy Tour saw the band bring along artists such as Boston and Ted Nugent in North America while a then-Let There Be Rock-era AC/DC opened up a handful of dates in Europe, leading to a reported flick-knife encounter between Butler and Malcolm Young.