Reevaluating Black Sabbath – Part One: Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath recently played their big farewell show. A lot of bands that I really like played at this event (along with some others who I think are terrible – see if you can guess which ones!). But when videos started coming out on YouTube from the event, I actually didn’t immediately go check out the sets from bands that I’m super familiar with. My first instinct was to go check out the closing set by the guests of honour themselves.

I watched Black Sabbath’s set, at first out of curiosity, but then watched the whole set in its entirety because I was really enjoying myself. The band was a little shaky, as age and health concerns have clearly taken a toll on them – outside of Geezer Butler, who – for a man named Geezer – seems to have held up remarkably well and still plays tremendously well. But for all of the spottiness of the performance, there was a sweet energy and the tunes sounded great. These were real songs, played imperfectly by real people who seemed very grateful for the time that they spent doing what they loved. I was moved, by these elderly satanists. They may not actually be satanists, but it is more fun to think that they are.

I got to thinking… I know most of the songs that they played. Everybody knows “Paranoid”. Everybody knows “Iron Man”. Everybody knows “War Pigs”. But beyond the big songs, I can’t really name many Black Sabbath songs, and definitely haven’t listened to their records. I told my friend Phil this, and he said that I absolutely had to listen to the first four Sabbath records.

So I will. This series of (probably four) posts is for Phil.

From Wikipedia: Black Sabbath is the debut studio album by English heavy metal band Black Sabbath, released on 13 February 1970 by Vertigo Records in the United Kingdom and on 1 June 1970 by Warner Bros. Records in the United States.^[3] The album is widely regarded as the first true metal album,^[4] and the opening title track, “Black Sabbath“, was named the greatest heavy metal song of all time by Rolling Stone,^[5] and has been referred to as the first doom metal song.^[6]

Let’s dig into Black Sabbath.

Black Sabbath

Ah yes, the titular song from the titular album from the titular band. Oof, this is hilariously evil right off the hop. I’m showing how little I actually know about Sabbath’s output that I am a little surprised by the fact that their first song on their first album is this heavy. I mean, this sounds like a slower and more dynamic Slayer to me, right down to the “Oh nooooo”, which is totally something Slayer would do (but probably more of a shriek and faster).

I also think it’s hilarious that Ozzy already sounds like an old man here. Haha. What was he, early twenties? Outstanding. He sounds like he crawled to the studio from a hospital gurney.

Okay, as we move to the back half and things escalate to a gallop, Ozzy says something about Satan being around the bend and I must concede… this song rips. The performances aren’t machine tight, but the “venomous riffs happening while a scary man wails in the distance” template has been set here. With style!

Only the last little instrumental section, with its descending bassline and tasty guitar wankery really betrays the time period that this was released in, but it still sounds approximately 50x more evil than anything I’ve heard from 1970.

I don’t know how I got to be in my mid-40s, having listened to this basic setup probably 500,000 times in my life, and have somehow not heard this song until now, but here we are. Oh boy, people must have thought this was so scary when it came out. Good start!

The Wizard

I have to be honest, I have a hard time with any song that includes a substantial “honkin’ on bobo” section. I kind of hate bobo.

This track opens up with something closer to a 70s sound that I’m familiar with. It’s funny, because this winds up sounding like “Black Betty” to me, except instead of the song being about Black Betty, it’s about Black Philip, the Satanic goat from The VVitch. It’s got the kinda boppy 70s rock hits and little riffs that the Ram Jam song has, but all of the chord choices are the work of Satan.

Overall, I am not sure that I like this song as much as “Black Betty” and I definitely don’t like it as much as the previous track on this album. If you lifted out all of the harmonica, I might go easier on it, though. I can’t stands me some harmonica, so your own mileage on “The Wizard” may vary from my own.

Wasp / Behind The Wall Of Sleep / Bassically / N.I.B.

Four songs all crammed into one? Alright, I’ll do my best to figure out which is which.

I guess “Wasp” is this little swinging jam off of the top, which has a pretty upbeat feel considering that everything on this record so far has sounded like it had been belched up from the bowels of hell (in a good way). Nice little bass guitar lines and very of-the-time guitar noodles.

Wait, is this slower jam about 30 seconds into the track already the second song? I’m not sure that “Wasp” needed to be considered its own song, guys.

“Behind The Wall Of Sleep” has a main riff that, to me, sounds like a slowed-down creepy version of a Rage Against The Machine riff, which I guess just means that Rage Against the Machine sounds like a sped-up version of… this.

Oh hang on, it went back to the swingy part again. What song are we in here now? I guess in hell you’re allowed to do album structure however you see fit.

Anyway, “Wasp/Behind The Wall of Sleep” manages to be menacing and groovy at the same time, which is probably what it was like to hang out with 99% of male rock stars in the late 1960s.

This extended wah wah bass guitar solo has to be “Bassically”, right? It would be a pretty fun bit of trickery if it wasn’t though, actually. When he kicks it over to the fuzz bass, that’s the start of “N.I.B.”? This album is very confusing.

“N.I.B.” kind of rips, huh? Again, this is like a very very evil version of “Sunshine of my Love”. The descending chord progression in the little “chorus” section is terrific, and I can’t decide if it’s actually better with the vocal part or with the guitar solo. Both are strong.

Wait, is this song written from the perspective of Lucifer? Haha, tremendous.

Wicked World

I can take or leave the peppy 70s blues rock that opens up “Wicked World”. It’s fine, but this sort of thing has never spoken to me and I don’t even think that this is a particularly inspired representation of the sound. But when things slow down a little bit and the track properly begins, I can get behind the vibe.

This kind of call and response, vocal line/blues riff/repeat format is dicey for me, but this works pretty well. This is actually the most traditionally “70s rock wail” that Ozzy has put on so far on this record, and it works really well! The verses have a great stomp going on and are intercut with fun little riff-e-roos.

The track then dips in to a psychedelic section that is pleasant, but I’m not sure works. And what certainly doesn’t work is the band dropping out entirely while Tony Iommi does a call and response section with himself.

The song returns to form when Ozzy’s filthy vocal rejoins the fray, but on a certain level I feel like the overall songwriting chops here are a little weak and this is really just a bunch of parts that have been slapped together. Which I could actually say about the last “track”, which was actually four songs slapped together.

And could actually also say that about “Black Betty” now that I think of it.

There are parts of “Wicked World” that I really dig, and I like it better overall than that song with the harmonica.

A Bit of Finger / Sleeping Village / Warning 

This (three-song?) song opens with the kind of acoustic guitar that bands like Metallica would put into their albums decades later to show how serious they are, but when Black Sabbath do it, they also include that hilarious instrument that makes a “boinnnng” sound for some reason. Incomprehensible decision, and I have enormous respect for it. It only gets funnier when the somber vocal comes in. Wow, outstanding!

After the somber and springy into section, we get a short section of some of the most 1970s-sounding, “Mississippi Queen”-ass guitar riffing we’ve heard so far on this record. This quickly turns into another “parts slapped together” session, culminating with two hard-panned guitar solos happening at once, but they’re both happening at the same time in a way the sounds like two guitarists who actually aren’t playing together at all. Just falling all over each other.

And it brings me no joy to tell you… well, I just don’t care for this guitar duo at all!

I like the big, lumbering riff on either side, though. And this transitions us into another “song”, with a vocal part and everything. According to the internet, this part is the “Warning” part, which is concerning because there appears to still be 10 minutes left in this track.

“Warning” is particularly blues-dirge-y, but it’s got a great and grimy feel. It sounds like dust and stale beer, but in a good way. I miss the evil on display earlier on in the record, but this is a very respectable slice of blues rock – a genre that can go (and often does go) very wrong.

After this, the Bill Ward seems to play “Wipeout” for a long time while Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler kinda fuck around. And they fuck around for a really long time. This kind of thing isn’t for me at all. I’m really more of a song guy than I am a wank-around guy. I mean, we’ve all been known to wank-around, but this is best done privately and not in a form that gets recorded for others to hear. You know?

Eventually “Warning” comes back around and delivers another verse, and it’s just fine. I would actually like this song well enough if it weren’t for the wildly directionless fuckaround sections. I think that this kind of thing used to get a little bit more mileage than they do in today’s “get to the fucking point” world, and that’s not Black Sabbath’s fault. But it also isn’t my fault that it’s dull!

The Verdict

I’m being completely honest when I say: This is the first time that I’ve ever heard this album. I believe that I may have heard “N.I.B.” before, but I am fairly sure that all of the other Sabbath songs I am familiar with are from later records.

I’m also being completely honest when I say: This album is a pleasant surprise, and is often pretty great! There’s a lot of stuff that I would cut and a lot of stuff that I will probably not revisit, but the opening track and the big four-song track that includes “N.I.B.” are heading straight to the ol’ favourites list.

This, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, sounds like an album that was recorded live off of the floor by a very excited young band who just wanted to show the world their evil jams. Not the kind you spread on toast, mind you. The kind of jam you spread on lost souls.

Still a little shocked by how heavy and how evil some of this sounds, especially from this early on in the band’s career. I had been under the impression, perhaps from things I’ve read, that Sabbath started out as kind of a blues-rock thing before inventing what would become Heavy Metal. And they definitely are doing the blues-rock thing all over the place here. But the very first song on their very first record is one of the most metal songs I’ve ever heard.

That’s really something.

On a certain level, it’s a personal failure for a “music fan” to have a blind spot as large as “I haven’t listened to much/any Black Sabbath”. I mean, that’s a lot more damning than just “I haven’t given Pearl Jam a fair shake“. But the silver lining here is that from what I understand, the first four Black Sabbath records rip, and I get to hear them with fresh ears. In my 40s!

So stay tuned for the next post, when I check out Paranoid. And stay tuned for when I’m in my 50s and I finally get around to listening to Led Zeppelin.