Black Sabbath - Best Of Black Sabbath (CD)

All Music Guide

Somewhere in every good music fan's basement is a worn out copy of either they vinyl, eight track or cassette of Black Sabbath's We Sold Our Soul for Rock 'n' Roll. The 1976 compilation captured the darkest and beefiest moments from the Ozzy years and served as a right of passage for millions of aspiring musicians, burnouts, Pastor's kids and closet miscreants. Rhino's sixteen track Best of Black Sabbath anthology only trumps Rock and Roll by two songs, but it offers superior sound and features at least a few cuts from 1976's Technical Ecstasy and 1978's Never Say Die, the band's last two premillennium Ozzy records. All of the faves are here ("Paranoid," "War Pigs," "Iron Man"), as well as fan classics like "Hole in the Sky" and "Supernaut," but there is enough material missing to call it a sampler rather than a "best of". Fans who are unwilling to shell out the extra money for Sanctuary's superior twodisc Sabbath collection from 2005 will find this sparse, yet solid overview to be a useful "Cliffs Notes" rendering of the birth of heavy metal.

- James Christopher Monger, All Music Guide