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Album Details
- Artist: Black Sabbath
- Album: Black Sabbath
- Label: Warner
- Year of Release: 1970
- ME Rating:
- Reviewed by: gwhill on 2013-02-11
RecommendBlack Sabbath – Black Sabbath
Released in 1969 in the last days of the hippie era, Black Sabbath`s debut had definite roots in what had come before, but was a major change in tone. Although heavily influenced by Cream and the blues, the music's dark tones and lyrical themes certainly set Black Sabbath apart from their peers. From the spooky title cut to the ending “Wicked World,” this album is a lot like a chilling trip through the old "haunted house" ride, with a wonderful soundtrack. Black Sabbath at the time was Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Ozzy Osbourne and Bill Ward.
The sounds of a storm and a tolling bell ominously start off the album as they open the title track. A wonderfully creepy tale unfolds complete with appropriately ominous music. This mode creates the focus for the majority of the piece, up until the final fast paced metal riff-driven segment that takes it out. This cut can certainly send chills down one's spine under the right circumstances. Beginning with harmonica, “The Wizard” certainly has its roots in the blues. “WASP” is a brief instrumental that is the first appearance of a triumphant sounding metal style that would eventually become a Sabbath mainstay. Based firmly on a dark and heavy sound, “Behind the Wall” also includes the aforementioned triumphant sounding mode. It showcases a very strong guitar solo, and closes with drums that lead into the next track. “Bassically” is one of the stronger bass solos on any album, based on its flavor and style. It really shows just how potent a musician Geezer Butler is. “N.I.B.” is quite a strong metal number, and is actually a love song. The twist on the lyrics is that the lover singing to his lover is none other than Lucifer. This song has one of the tastiest guitar solos ever recorded.
The next two-fer is unique. It’s entitled “A Bit of Finger/Sleeping Village.” Intriguing acoustic guitar in a somewhat spooky vein is accompanied by juice harp. This entire segment is haunting and considerably effective. The next segment begins with more trademark Sab sounds, first the triumphant, then the slower and heavier. This leads to a short percussion solo. The percussion is then joined by bass following by guitar creating some wonderful cross-riffing interplay in the twin guitar attack. This then goes back to the more heavy chord driven segment. Then the cut moves to a wall of guitar sound. This is a strong groove oriented, bluesy segment. "I was born without you baby, but my feelings were a little bit too strong." This is an extremely tasteful hard rock number that calls to mind Cream and really shows off Iommi's guitar prowess. As this segment ends, it leads to some strong guitar riffing over drums that works into a nicely metallic free form jam segment. Another riff mode jumps out of that one, and this is a very strong blues rock jam. This whole instrumental section is very strong. Becoming a wandering freeform jam, this covers a lot of musical territory, alternating between bluesy, mellow and evocative, and hard rocking. It even moves into the weird and spooky. The cut then jumps to a strong rocking Sab segment that leads to more moody guitar line, then taking the song back to earlier segments to end the piece. The strong riff driven intro to the closer “Wicked World” features definite hard rock jamming from all three instrumentalists. As the next movement of the song begins, it is in the form of more chord driven, somewhat bluesy Sabbath mayhem. This song has so many musical changes including an evolution into a more mellow and emotional guitar segment, and a metallic guitar solo segment that is rather in the mode of Led Zeppelin. If you are a person who really appreciates guitar riffing, this cut will really work for you.
In some ways, this deserves to be considered an essential album. Clearly without this starting point, the Sabbath that was to come wouldn’t have happened. Additionally, there is some great music here. The thing is, the sound is different enough from the albums that would come after, that I can’t really put that “essential” label on it, so let’s settle for “classic.” Perhaps taken outside the context of Black Sabbath and just in the general rock music category, it also deserves the “essential” label as it really was a step forward in redefining rock music.
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on 2011-02-22 CharlesMartel Said:
Although Black Sabbath are credited, with this album, of creating the first heavy metal album in history, to be honest it wouldn't have seemed that way at the time it was released. Back in 1970, this would have fitted in with the rest of the blues rock based music that was being put out by bands like Led Zeppelin and Free, with echoes back to Cream. OK, it was slower and louder, even a little ponderous, but basically we are talking about a familiar twelve-bar blues. What made it different what was Black Sabbath did with this format. This was the breakthrough which made Black Sabbath stand out from their contemporaries.
For a start, the guitars were tuned down so that the riffs sounded as if they were being dragged forcibly out of the amps. Then there was the image - long hair, doom laden with a hint of the satanic. Add in to that the sound of some psychotic lunatic wailing creepily over the whole thing and a thundering bass line and powerful drumming underpinning it all, this sounded like music which emerged from the nightmarish world of the worst excesses of the heavy industrial heartland from which the four sabs had themselves sprung.
I cannot believe that the band intended the first album to come out this way. Even if they did, I find it hard to believe that it was a serious attempt at putting some distance between themselves and their contemporaries, but that distance emerged and in later releases Black Sabbath almost became a parody of themselves in trying to maintain it. But they announced themselves in such a manner that they were impossible to ignore. Few bands can have the opening track of the first album bearing the same name as the band. That is making a real entrance!
If you doubt this, then listen to the opening of the title track. The sound of that awful dense rain that only seems to come from the blighted urban wastes of central and northern England with a doom-laden, almost prophetic tolling bell opens the curtain to that slow, ponderous riff and Ozzy's plaintiff please-don't-take-my-soul vocals. If ever a single opening track off a debut album opened the door to a whole new genre of music then this was it.
Sadly, I cannot say that the rest of the album holds up to that opener. "The Wizard " is so long it becomes tedious - Tommy Iommi did not have the virtuosity to hold it with long solos the way Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page could. "Behind the Wall of Sleep" is weak and seems stylistically out of place. You can trace back all modern metal's occasional obsession with guitar wankery to this rather disappointing track. Yet it is redeemed by "NIB" and " Evil Woman" which provide a fitting uplift (in quality if not content). This CD has the added bonus of "Wicked World ", which was not on the original 1970 vinyl release, but as it so often formed a staple of their early sets, is a worthy inclusion here.
In the end, whether you like Black Sabbath specifically or metal in general, this album must be recognised for the classic it is. It has worn better, in my opinion, than its more commercially-successful successor, "Paranoid", and is the album to which anyone must eventually turn when reaching back through time to the roots of metal.
Rating: 7/10
