Fair - not as wet for sure, but there's still a bunch of verb in there (esp on guitar),
Yeah I'm listening to the original Sabbath "Iron Man" on headphones now, and you're right, there's more guitar reverb than I ever realized. The drums are quite tight and close-sounding though. Vocals too. There's reverb on everything, it's not nearly as bone-dry as I had remembered - but it's still relatively subtle. It's a far cry from, say, "Black Sabbath" which is just drenched in 'verb on everything as a very pronounced effect.
I'm not sure which record your comments re. proximity effect and highpass filtering were about?
I finally listened to the live Elves video above - I'd missed it originally in this thread - and yeah, to me I would not have mistaken it for Sabbath - everybody phrases quite differently than their Sabbath counterparts, the solo section especially sounds totally un-Sabbath to me - but the verses are pretty close for a cover band, with a bit of their own stamp on it
I don't think I would even have realized that was RJD on vocals! I've never heard anything of his from this long ago. He really did evolve his voice since then.