black sabbath

Record #932: Black Sabbath – Heaven and Hell (1980)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

There’s no question that Black Sabbath is one of the most important metal bands—nay, bands, period—in the history of recorded music. But for most fans, that legacy comes with a few asterisks.

The first six records are universally regarded as essential and indelible classics. After that, it gets a little fuzzy. Between the unmoored experimentation of the late Ozzy era to the frequent lineup changes in the decades to follow, later Sabbath is a bit like panning a spent river for gold.

However, there is one bright and shining nugget of an exception in the throng of so-so releases: Heaven and Hell, the first record to feature new vocalist Ronnie James Dio. His arrival brought an irrefutable shot of energy to the legendary metal outfit, bringing their best record since Sabotage.

But there’s a pretty big problem with this record: it just doesn’t sound like Black Sabbath.

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Record #924: Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath (1970)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

There is perhaps no more unlikely group to change the course of music than Black Sabbath. Originally called the Pulka Tulk Blues Band, and later Earth, the working class quartet from Birmingham cut their teeth playing in blues clubs with a sound not unlike the blues rock of Cream.

But somewhere between forming and recording their first album, a series of events caused them to morph into one of the most ferocious and influential bands of all time. And while Black Sabbath still retains a lot of their blues jam tendencies, the nucleus of their legendary career—and heavy metal as a whole—is impossible to miss.

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Record #763: Black Sabbath – Sabotage (1975)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald
Black Sabbath Sabotage vinyl review

Over the last few years, I’ve been making a concerted effort to give Black Sabbath their due. After all, few other bands have such a dominating influence across an entire class of genre. Hundreds of bands are still trading their souls to make music as heavy as their First Six.

Sabotage is the final of this sextet, and I realize now that I’ve mistakenly believed it to be the first step in a downward trend. And while it may not be as untouchable as Master of Reality or Paranoid, it’s maybe the most adventurous of the First Six—and still just as heavy.

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Record #730: Black Sabbath – Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

After spending much of my life believing Black Sabbath to be wholly evil (as a child in the Evangelical Church) or wholly outdated (as a self-serious hipster), I’ve spent the last couple years slowly working my way through their catalogue—and learning just how wrong I was.

Throughout the early records, the band gets progressively heavier with each release. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath certainly doesn’t stop that trajectory at all, but neither does it rely on heaviness alone as a compositional device. The result is some of the most cathartic and gorgeous music ever written.

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Record #640: Black Sabbath – Vol. 4 (1972)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

For years, I’ve mistakenly thought of Black Sabbath as a one-trick pony—probably on account of the monotony of the horde of copycats citing their catalogue as their bible.

But after digging deeper into their discography, I can see now that the source material is much more diverse than I could have imagined. Vol. 4 is especially varied, and not just in comparison to their other records, but within its own tracklist.

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Record #601: Black Sabbath – Master Of Reality (1971)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

For my great love of metal bands that are often described as “Black Sabbath worship” (see: Pallbearer, Elder, Baroness, Isis), I’ve never dug too deep into Black Sabbath themselves beyond some superficial listens to Paranoid.

But on a recent trip to the record store, I decided to change that. Trying to decide between this record and Vol. 4, I pulled up an article that called this record the “ultra-heavy” foundation of doom, sludge, and stoner metal.

I just wasn’t expecting so much overt Christianity.

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Record #48: Black Sabbath – Paranoid (1970)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Black Sabbath is often cited as one of the founders of the popular rock subgenre “metal,” but you’d never guess if you compared it to the drop-D tuned, breakdown plagued, double-kick-drum fury of today’s metal.
This is too melodic, lacking the palm muted chunks of contemporary metal, instead favoring dark (for the time) lyrics put over heavily distorted (again, for the time) blues rock.
But don’t take that as a criticism of the music, only of modern semantics.
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