Black Sabbath's 1978 record Never Say Die! was the band's final album to feature vocalist Ozzy Osbourne until their farewell effort 13 in 2013. Osbourne even quit Black Sabbath during the rcording sessions, and was briefly replaced by Fleetwood Mac vocalist Dave Walker until his return (which is a whole separate story). Outside Osbourne, Black Sabbath was struggling hard with alcohol and drug abuse, and the lineup just wasn't getting along.
So it's no surprise that in an interview with Metal Edge Magazine, bassist Geezer Butler called Never Say Die! "easily the worst album we did." Butler said the band lost the plot on Never Say Die!, though in retrospect he believes that Osbourne's approach was the correct one.
"Those were certainly a problem, too. The thing is, we were trying to progress too much musically. We completely lost the plot, I think. We stopped doing the things that made Sabbath what it was and began going from more melodic stuff, which was a mistake looking back. Ozzy always wanted to still sound like the old version of Sabbath, while Tony and I wanted to expand musically. Looking back, Ozzy was probably right because our expansion caused us to lose what Sabbath was supposed to be about.
He continued: "Definitely not in the same way I view the earlier records. And I will say that Never Say Die! is easily the worst album we did. The reason for that is we tried to manage ourselves and produce the record ourselves. We wanted to do it on our own, but in truth, not one of us had a single clue about what to do. By that point, we were spending more time with lawyers and in court rather than being in the studio writing. It was just too much pressure on us, and the writing suffered."
