Sabbath biographer (and Classic Rock writer) Mick Wall calls this “journey-metal”, a most apposite description of the song’s ebb and flow.īearing in mind how embattled Sabbath were at the time they recorded Sabotage, its opening track is a master class in straight-to-the-point metal. With its gorgeous orchestral intro, searing Iommi riff and whisper-to-a-scream dynamics, the centrepiece of the Mob Rules album laid down a blueprint that acolytes Metallica would subsequently take to the bank. Bonus points are awarded for Bill Ward’s exemplary cowbell work. Ozzy doubles up Iommi’s main riff on harmonica – an inspired touch, which showed Sabbath were not the music Neanderthals they were made out to be by the music press.Īlmost 10 minutes long, layered with studio trickery and featuring some of Tony Iommi’s most hook-laden riffs, Megalomania is a gloriously over-the-top exercise in labyrinthine excess. “Back then we did a lot of dope,” is how Tony Iommi prefaces his explanation of the origins of The Wizard, the hard-driving second track on Sabbath’s debut, inspired equally by Tolkien and the band’s “magic” drug dealer. The film was shit, the song is a Sabbath classic.

The title track of vocalist Ronnie James Dio’s second album with Sabbath, a cautionary tale about blindly accepting authority, was written in John Lennon’s house Tittenhurst Park, originally intended for the soundtrack to the animated film Heavy Metal, just days after Lennon’s murder in New York. Ozzy later noted that the hash the band were smoking at Morgan Studios during the album sessions was “phenomenal”. The mid-song ejaculation to ‘ Smoke it! Get high!’ gives a clue as to the source material for this anxious song about a soul adrift in a world of ‘pain, suffering and misery’. Ferociously funky, with a ear-worm Iommi riff, Supernaut is the supercharged sound of a gifted band at the peak of their powers. “When I listen to songs like Supernaut I can just about taste cocaine,” Ozzy noted of this Vol. Loaded with stark, apocalyptic imagery of nuclear annihilation (‘ Robot minds of robot slaves/Lead men to atomic graves’) and souls burning in hell, Electric Funeral sounds like the ultimate bad trip, although the funky turnaround at two minutes 17 seconds is inexplicably uplifting. Secretly I wanted to be a drummer so I could play that funky drum lick in Hand Of Doom.” Charlie Starr, Blackberry Smoke I got a cassette of Paranoid from a friend when I was in seventh grade, and started, like everyone else, to learn all those amazing riffs. It’s like two songs for the price of one, really.

“It’s funky, riffy, sinister and uplifting all at the same time. Included on Paranoid “to make the heavier tracks sound heavier”, according to the guitarist.įeaturing a mocking anti-religious lyric from lapsed Catholic Geezer, the romping After Forever is one of the most musically sophisticated songs in Sabbath’s early canon, and is a result of the quartet feeling the pressure to follow-up the No.1 success of Paranoid with a more ambitious sound. Twinkling, tripped-out psychedelia, that betrayed Tony Iommi’s jazz influences. Rick Wakeman charged Sabbath a ‘fee’ of two pints of Director’s bitter for his incandescent piano playing. This bluesy paean to Geezer’s then-girlfriend had its lyrical origins in Ozzy repeating porno dialogue, to his bandmate’s amusement. Out of their heads they may have been, but the interplay between Iommi, Butler and a brilliantly dextrous Bill Ward is pure joy. 4 telegraphs Sabbath’s experimental mind-set. Inspired by a magazine headline, Black Sabbath's 2013 comeback found Ozzy musing upon the existence of a higher power in the wake of terrorist atrocities committed in the name of religion.

It’s also the last one out on the record – an honorary spot, as everybody into vinyl knows.” - Mikael Åkerfeldt, Opeth “It’s a beautiful piece of music, mostly based around Ozzy’s voice, Iommi’s acoustic guitar and Will Malone’s string arrangements. ‘ There’s no escaping the power of Satan’, sang Tony Martin, making a convincing case for Sabbath entering the 90s as a band reborn. The title track from Sabbath’s 14th album Headless Cross, and their finest since Heaven And Hell.

For the closing track of Technical Ecstasy, inspiration came from the prostitutes on the streets of Miami, resulting in a ‘tribute’ to the healing properties of ‘take away women for sale’. “I got a song out of it at least,” a more chilled Ozzy reflected later.īy 1976 Black Sabbath were in search of direction. Ozzy’s acerbic open letter to former manager Patrick Meehan (‘ Are you Satan, are you man?’), venting the singer’s fury at the legal “bullshit”.

Black sabbath stand