Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath (LP)

Josh's Music Reviews

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Sep 20, 2001 | 1 out of 1 found this Black Sabbath review helpful

You put the disc in and hit "play." Expecting to hear music, you are instead greeted by the sounds of pouring rain, nearby thunder, and the grim, endless tolling of a church bell. Wondering what's going on, you are hit by surprise when out of nowhere... comes a loud three-note guitar riff and a heavy bass drum matching up with the still-tolling bell. This is "Black Sabbath," the song often credited with starting heavy metal. Displaying Tony Iommi's simple yet stunning guitar work, Bill Ward's pounding drumbeats, Geezer Butler's amazing bass wizardry, and Ozzy Osbourne's powerful, scared-as-hell voice, the song is a perfect example of the band that shares its name. Surprisingly enough for the debut album by the godfathers of metal, this CD actually doesn't contain a whole lot of the doom-and-gloom pieces found on their later albums and on work by their countless protégés. Not that there's anything wrong with that - the hard, fast(er) stuff from Sabbath's days as the blues band Earth are lots of fun to listen to, especially with the volume way up. Songs like "Warning" and "Wicked World" have all the hard rock/blues guitar of Led Zeppelin, and the middle of "Warning" (although it sounds like the song has already ended until it comes back to the driving riff and remorseful lyrics) contains several minutes of all-out jamming. The creativity, experimentation, and let's-just-have-some-fun atmosphere are practically bursting from this album. Wether it be the old Western movie harmonicas of "The Wizard" or the spontaneous bass solo which bridges "Behind the Wall of Sleep" and "N.I.B.," there's lots to love here. This is Black Sabbath at their finest - four guys just pumping out anything they can think of, always giving you something other than what you thought you were about to here. While the lyrical rhyming is less than perfect at times ("Satan standing there, he's smiling/ Watches the flames get higher and higher") and two of the tracks feature several independent songs compressed into those two tracks (it's just kinda annoying when you want to hear "N.I.B." and instead of just skipping straight to number 6 you instead have to fast forward through two other songs), those flaws are easily excusable when you sit down and listen to even a bit of this album. Read more Less