Tony Iommi has told Planet Rock that the master tapes for Black Sabbath's Born Again have been recovered and transferred, and that a remix is going ahead.
"To be honest, we couldn't find those tapes for a long time. They disappeared," he told Ian Danter. "I don't know who located them at the end, whether it was Ralph, my manager, or who found them. But they were in some record company storage. And anyway, we've gotten them back and they were transferred. So they are ready to start work on."
The album, from August 1983, is the only one the band made with Ian Gillan singing and the last studio record with Bill Ward on drums. Its mix has been argued about ever since. "When we actually did it and we heard it in a studio, it was great," Iommi said. "And then we went on tour, and the next thing, it's in the charts here, and we heard it. We thought, God, it's really muffly. What happened? Somewhere in the process along the way, something happened."
He expects the complaints either way. "So many people have got used to" the sound, he said, and "I'm sure if I do a remix on it, it'll be, oh no, it's not as good as it was before."
Gillan has been blunter about it, telling Rolling Stone Brasil last year that the bass level was so high radio could not play it.