A Wholly Retro Sabbath

“Hold up your cigarette lighters,” commanded Ozzy Osbourne at the Black Sabbath reunion concert on Tuesday at the Great Western Forum. “Light the place up!”

And they did. It may be a no-smoking era, but not with this crowd.

Well, not everyone wants to party like it’s 1999. These folks were quite happy to turn the calendar back to 1979, the last time--save for two special events--the original Sabbath lineup pounded out the ominous riffs and occult-tease imagery that made the Birmingham, England, quartet a legend.

Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward readily obliged. There was no musical updating, no nods to newer rock styles. Even in appearance, with all but Butler now past 50, only Ward, with close-cropped gray hair, showed signs of middle age (as for the others, only their hairdressers know for sure).

Osbourne, in fact, looked trimmer than he was in the film montage of ‘70s scenes that preceded the show, and his signature frog-hop move had real spring to it--though he still runs like Billy Crystal doing an old man.

The music, however, left no doubt that Sabbath deserves its influential place in history--and not just as a Spinal Tap archetype. The group still is that, of course. Such song titles as “Electric Funeral” speak for themselves, though wisely, Tap-esque effects were at a minimum--the band rising onto the stage via lifts through a blanket of smoke, and the requisite pyrotechnics on a few numbers.

But 20 years later, the purity of Sabbath’s attack is admirable. Iommi’s stolid, crunch-chord riffs and Osbourne’s melodies have all the subtle complexity of a soccer chant, while the attempts at portentousness should now seem comical even to fundamentalist preachers. Still, on Tuesday, the first of two sold-out Forum nights, spirited versions of headbanging classics “N.I.B,” “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” and especially “Paranoid” were trips back to the heavy-metal wellspring.

Relevance? In this case, that’s entirely irrelevant.

The night actually started in the present, as young, Calabasas-based Incubus opened with an engagingly energetic modern-metal alloy in the Rage Against the Machine and Korn neighborhood, incorporating Middle Eastern modalities, hip-hop turntable scratching and ear-grabbing guitar effects.

Second-billed Pantera, the Brazilian pile driver, started the journey back in time with a pummeling set of iron-clad sounds. “I want to see heads banging like it’s 19-[expletive]-93, if not 1987,” shouted singer Phil Anselmo. It was music to vote for Jesse Ventura by. How much more relevance do you need?