[8] The album received mixed reviews, with critics calling it "unbalanced" and insisting its energy was scattered in too many directions.

Prior to recording, vocalist Osbourne briefly quit the band and was temporarily replaced by Dave Walker, formerly of Savoy Brown and Fleetwood Mac.

The band wrote a handful of songs with Walker, with that short-lived line-up even performing an early version of what would become "Junior's Eyes" on the BBC programme Look Hear.

We ended up having to write in the day so we could record in the evening, and we never had time to review the tracks and make changes.

[12] The songs with Walker were redone; "Junior's Eyes" was rewritten to be about the then-recent death of Osbourne's father.

"[13] In 2001 Iommi elaborated to Dan Epstein of Guitar World, "I booked a studio in Toronto, and we had to find some place to rehearse.

Butler was growing impatient with Osbourne's criticism of his lyrics, telling Guitar World in 1994: "I used to hate doing it towards the end of the Ozzy era.

In the 2004 book How Black Was Our Sabbath, Iommi is quoted as saying, "We were all into silly games ... and we were getting really drugged out ... We'd go down to the sessions and have to pack up because we were too stoned.

We were taking care of business ourselves, we didn't have millions from the record company and, despite the booze and Ozzy's departure, we tried to experiment with jazz and stuff the way we had in the early days.

The US and UK releases differed slightly in artwork, specifically the faint images of British military pilots seen in the sky.

The band had rejected an alternate Hipgnosis design featuring masked doctors – an image eventually used for Rainbow's 1981 album Difficult to Cure.

Iommi explains in his autobiography Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven & Hell with Black Sabbath, that when he sang, bassist Geezer Butler couldn't keep a straight face.

The album received mostly negative reviews; according to Terry Staunton of Uncut, "even diehard fans among the music press [were] unsure of muddling excursions towards electronica ('Johnny Blade') and passages that veered worryingly close to jazz ('Air Dance', the curious horns in the instrumental 'Breakout').

"[23] It is not held in high esteem today, with AllMusic critic Eduardo Rivadavia referring to the album as "unfocused", saying it "will hold little interest to the average heavy metal fan".

[20] In his own Uncut piece, Staunton bemoaned the experiments, but believed that the "few occasions where the stars align and ducks form an orderly row" are "worth celebrating", singling out the title track for its power and "Junior's Eyes" for having a vitality and tension missing elsewhere.

[23] Rob Michaels of the Spin Alternative Record Guide (1995) writes that "the rhythm section has a spry spring in its leaden step and the songs are tough and catchy.

It's not just steamhammer headbanging stuff all the way through ... We got rid of all our inner frustrations: what each of us individually wanted to put down over the years but couldn't because of the pressures of work.

"[13] However, Osbourne quickly soured on the LP, telling After Hours in a 1981 interview "The last album I did with Sabbath was Never Say Die!

[24] He went on to claim that the band flew to Toronto in January during sub-zero temperature "purely because the Rolling Stones had recorded a live album there."

[27] Megadeth covered the title track for the 2000 tribute album Nativity In Black II, with singer Dave Mustaine telling Nick Bowcott in 2008, "The simplicity of Iommi's style makes this rhythm progression one of my all-time favorites: fast, classic English riff-stylings with a climactic arrangement."

[30] He called it "straight-up pop rock, primed for heavy rotation", but felt it had merits, complimenting Osbourne's confident vocals and Iommi's guitar for "[not being] buried like it was on Technical Ecstasy, and the rigid melodies force his playing to be concise and punchy.

ranked it 15th, praising the choice of a punky opening track but panning the inclusion of a Ward-song sung and noting a lack of creative enthusiasm throughout.

[31] Ultimate Classic Rock ranked it 12th, praising the energetic title track, "Johnny Blade" and "A Hard Road", but believing they and the abundance of weaker songs "paled next to the colossal metal anthems recorded just a few years earlier".

Ward's drum tech Graham Wright and Osbourne's personal assistant David Tangye, who write extensively about the tour in their 2004 book How Black Was Our Sabbath, reveal that relations between the bands got off to a shaky start at the 22 May show at the Apollo Theatre in Manchester.

The two bands came to get along very well together, and Alex Van Halen would often sit ... behind Bill's drum kit, watching and listening to him play onstage."

On the U.S. leg of the tour, Van Halen's presence had a major influence on ticket sales since they were a much bigger draw at home than they were in the UK.

tour, the first happening in Neunkirchen am Brand, Germany, in front of a hall crammed with "thousands of extremely stoned, drunk and rowdy GIs" when, three songs into a show, Iommi stalked off the stage because of a buzzing from his guitar stack.

A video from this period, professionally recorded on the UK tour at the Hammersmith Odeon in June 1978, can be seen on the Sanctuary Visual Entertainment DVD, also entitled Never Say Die.

I'll always remember the moment he came out of his dressing room – it was next to ours – and you literally couldn't see his head through the cloud of dope smoke.

In his autobiography, Iommi reveals that because drummer Bill Ward had his hair in braids at the time, "everybody thought he was taking the mickey out of Bob (Marley).