![]() ![]() ![]() Soon, Ozzy Osbourne starts singing about a mysterious “figure in black” pointing and staring at him-the lyrics were inspired by a vision bassist Geezer Butler had experienced in his room, then painted completely black, decorated with occultist books and satanic images. It’s almost 40 seconds before the guitar riff strikes. Heavy rain, thunder, and creepy church bells lay the foundation of “Black Sabbath” (the first song on Black Sabbath’s first album, Black Sabbath). First, the scene is set: a dark and stormy night. Much like the horror genre (the band name itself was stolen from a 1963 Italian anthology by “Master of the Macabre” Mario Bava), these songs were generally designed to incite fear, terror, suspense, excitement. Enter four twenty-something blokes and the debut album they recorded in 12 hours. But it took a different kind of heaviness-the kind inspired by horror films, the occult, and a bleak working-class upbringing in Aston, Birmingham-to give heavy metal its true form. By the end of the 1960s, genre co-pioneers Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin had already begun unleashing distortion, riffs, and solos on a generation still enamored with folk and early psychedelia. It’s not that Black Sabbath invented heavy metal. And it happened almost entirely by accident. Three years later, that ominous detuned tone would form the backbone of Black Sabbath’s sound. The story goes that he was so determined to keep playing guitar, he fashioned prosthetic tips out of melted plastic bottles and detuned his guitar by a minor third because the looser strings were easier to play. When he was 17 years old, a young guitarist, born Frank Anthony Iommi, sliced the tips off two of his fingers while working at a sheet metal factory in Birmingham. Paranoid remains the diabolical wellspring from which innumerable bands-and many metal subgenres-have sprung. Within just over two years, Black Sabbath released four albums and birthed something much bigger than themselves: heavy metal. Many critics found the songs overly theatrical, but the public was ravenous for them. This is heavy subject matter, and the band developed a musical vocabulary to match it, with ponderous drums and scowling guitars that felt light-years away from, say, CSN&Y. “Hand of Doom” deals with heroin addiction among soldiers, while “Paranoid” traffics in depression. ![]() “Iron Man,” bearing one of the most recognizable guitar riffs on the planet, is told from the perspective of a man who, after being blasted into space, has seen humanity’s grim future but is unable to communicate it upon his return. “War Pigs”-meant at one point to be the album’s title track-opens with air-raid sirens and ultimately envisions the evisceration of warmongering politicians. Despite critics’ misreading of the album as a Satanic screed (a perception Sabbath played up), the album in fact contained searing indictments of the elite. Out of that despair came this furious, uncompromising record. But by the late ’60s, the death toll in Vietnam was rising, the band’s native Birmingham remained studded with World War II bomb sites, and these blue-collar boys saw only mind-dulling factory work ahead of them. It wasn’t always this way, of course: Confirmed Beatles fans, Sabbath’s members had their psychedelic period. Gone were the flower children, peace chants, and Day-Glo paint in came monumental, vicious guitar riffs, Ozzy Osbourne’s snarling twist of a voice, and stories of doom, drug addiction, and death. If any album signaled the definitive end of the ’60s, it was Paranoid. The lyrics, however, were showing signs of the band’s condition after years of excessive partying. The acoustic “Fluff” showed their gentle side, while the addition of Yes’ Rick Wakeman on piano and mini-moog for “Sabbra Cadabra” created a new sound dimension never before associated with the band. While bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward still played in lockstep, Iommi multitracked his guitar parts for greater effect. Again Iommi nailed it, with songs such as “A National Acrobat,” “Sabbra Cadabra,” “Killing Yourself to Live,” and “Spiral Architect” all featuring catchy but powerful guitar hooks that took Sabbath further than the first three albums. and began rehearsing in the dungeon of Clearwater Castle that the vibe was right the title track came to him, and the album began to flow. It wasn’t until the band returned to the U.K. 4-but guitarist Tony Iommi, the man responsible for writing the band’s indelible riffs, encountered writer’s block. ![]() The band returned to Los Angeles, where they’d recorded their previous album, Vol. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath was Black Sabbath’s most intricate album to date. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |