The final album in the trilogy Johnny Cash has recorded with legendary producer Rick Rubin is also the first since the Man In Black was diagnosed with a neurological disease. That lends even greater weight to these stripped-down recordings of well-known laments such as Tom Petty's 'I Won't Back Down' and U2's 'One'. Against all the odds, Cash has managed to wrest new meanings from this familiar material - the sign of a great artist. Thoroughly grim yet strangely haunting, his harsh, unsentimental vocals evoke the sound of a man staring death full in the face and not giving an inch. This is a truly compelling album, which already feels like a modern classic.
