I watch a lot of television — like A LOT of television — and I’ve never seen a single episode of CSI. I know this sounds snobbish (and maybe it is in fact snobbish), but I’m saying it to make a point: I’m a fan of Black Sabbath, a passionate consumer of music, an employee at a well-read music blog, and I watch a lot of television. At some point in the last few months, some integrated marketing dude must have looked at a Venn diagram or analytics breakdown or something that included demographics overlapping with mine and realized that while premiering a new Black Sabbath song on a television show was not a bad idea, per se, premiering that song on CSI was automatically going to send a particular (and not especially flattering) message: that Black Sabbath is music for old people out of touch with popular culture. They’re not even being subtle about it — in the CSI clip during which Sabbath “performs” their new song, “End Of The Beginning” there’s a cutaway to Ted Danson (age: 65) talking about seeing the Grateful Dead in ’78 or something. I’m not saying they should be featured on Girls or Portlandia, but why not, say, Sons Of Anarchy? Or True Blood? It’s just a bad look all around and it makes me totally nauseous.

Mercifully, the song itself appears literally at the very beginning of the episode, and is played in full, with the band miming a live performance over the studio version, so if you just want to hear it, you can do so without actually sitting through an episode of CSI. Frustratingly, the song is not great. I was a fan of “God Is Dead?” — the first track to be released from the band’s reunion LP, 13 — even voting for it to appear on our list of last month’s best new metal songs, but that track at least appeared to be an attempt to recapture the Ozzy-era Sabbath sound. “End Of The Beginning” is more reminiscent of Ozzy’s post-classic MOR period — 1988’s No Rest For The Wicked and ’91’s No More Tears. Those records don’t suck, but they don’t exactly cry out to be revisited, and it’s a huge waste of Geezer Butler and Tony Iommi to have them playing session parts when they’re capable of signature sounds. Of course, those records also sold a combined 7 million copies, so it stands to reason that some aspect of the Sabbath reunion would also try to capitalize on some of that mainstream audience, too. Which also explains the CSI spot. They’re not looking for blogger goodwill and they’re not gonna get it — it’s cynical and sad and beneath both Sabbath and Sabbath fans. Maybe I’ll dislike it less in another context, but for now, this is all we’ve got. Go here to check out the song, which comes at the 0:00 point in the episode, after like five mandatory commercials.