Artist: BLACK SABBATH
Album: BLACK SABBATH DELUXE VINYL (LP)

Release date: 1970/ 2015
EAN/UPS: 5414939920783
Media type: LP

Black Sabbath's debut album is the birth of heavy metal as we now know it. Compatriots like Blue Cheer, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple were already setting new standards for volume and heaviness in the realms of psychedelia, blues-rock, and prog rock. Yet of these metal pioneers, Sabbath are the only one whose sound today remains instantly recognizable as heavy metal, even after decades of evolution in the genre.

For all his stylistic innovations and strengths as a composer, Iommi isn't a hugely accomplished soloist. By the end of the murky, meandering, ten-minute cover of the Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation's "Warning," you can already hear him recycling some of the same simple blues licks he used on side one (plus, the word "warn" never even appears in the song, because Ozzy Osbournemisheard the original lyrics). (The British release included another cover, a version of Crow's "Evil Woman" that doesn't quite pack the muscle of the band's originals; the American version substituted "Wicked World," which is much preferred by fans.)

But even if the seams are still showing on this quickly recorded document, Black Sabbath is nonetheless a revolutionary debut whose distinctive ideas merely await a bit more focus and development. Henceforth Black Sabbath would forge ahead with a vision that was wholly theirs.


A1     Black Sabbath     6:20
A2     The Wizard     4:22
A3     Wasp / Behind The Wall Of Sleep / Bassically / N.I.B.     9:44

B1     Wicked World     4:30
B2     A Bit Of Finger / Sleeping Village / Warning     14:32




LINE-UP:

Ozzy Osbourne – vocals, harmonica on "The Wizard"
Tony Iommi – guitar
Geezer Butler – bass guitar
Bill Ward – drums