While the Never Say Die album is full of party hardy metal indicative of Glam metal acts of the next decade along with their 1978 opening act Van Halen, like the title track, Shock Wave and the Springsteen-esque triumphalism of A Hard Road, Air Dance is the best of the other side of the album. There is a more prog jazz feel to this and many other numbers that sets this LP apart from it's successors, while flute, medieval folk, synths and strings had factored into other Black Sabbath albums this one followed on from the dramatic, theatrical storytelling of Technical Ecstacy diverting the themes away from the politics and gloomy, fuzzed out metal they pioneered.
Here we start with some heavily rendered slide guitars before we get treated to a dizzying cocktail of lounge lizard piano and jazzy hi-hat playing from Bill Ward. Ozzy's dreamy vocals create a relaxing tune with Imomi's uncharacteristically smooth slide guitar interjects occasionally, the track is very airy and light in terms of tonally to the point it might float away, away away..
It's also got a very dance able rhythm lie a lot of Sabbath tracks did fitting the title even more, ending this prog-metal masterpiece with it's some tense Sci-Fi synth licks right out of the Twilight Zone amongst a samba beat at the end as Imomi deliciously wah-wahs out. It's a eclectic effort that works from a band very much misunderstood and an album very much misunderstood by the band themselves who hated it, it was of course the last of the classic lineup. Curiously the same piano runs appear in the following track ,Over You, in an almost identical jazzy hard rock progression.
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