The album’s departure from the darker lyrics of
Headless Cross was discussed by
Tony Iommi in his 2012 autobiography
Iron Man: “For our next album,
Tyr, we went back to the Woodcray Studios in February 1990, with me and Cozy producing it again. On
Headless Cross,
Tony Martin had just come into the band and he assumed, oh, Black Sabbath, it’s all about the Devil, so his lyrics were full of the Devil and Satan. It was too much in your face. We told him to be a bit more subtle about it, so for
Tyr he did all these lyrics about Nordic gods and whatnot. It took me a while to get my head around that.” The album was originally intended to be titled
Satanic Verses but
Tyr was chosen instead to disassociate it from the dark themes of the previous album. This album represents possibly the most dramatic departure from Black Sabbath’s traditional sound, with only traces of it found in the occasional riff. The production has been criticised by some (who claim
Cozy Powell’s drums drown out most of the other instruments) and praised by others (who note that this is one of Sabbath’s heaviest albums and perhaps the most prominently reliant on keyboards by the perennial fifth member,
Geoff Nicholls). The band have stated that while they do not disown or regret the song "Feels Good to Me", it was put on the album solely to be released as a single and does not fit in musically with the rest of the record. It was also played once, on the first show of the tour on September 1, 1990. The Tyr tour never made it beyond UK & Europe and consisted of around 50 shows total.
Geezer Butler,
Ian Gillan and
Brian May made guest appearances on the European leg of the Tyr tour; Butler and May appearing during the encore of the show performed on 8 September 1990 at the
Hammersmith Odeon in London. In Norse mythology,
Týr is the god of single combat and heroic glory, and the 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 the modern letter
x or
z, not
y. ==Legacy==