Album Review: Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath (1970)

As promised, the month-long Black Sabbath catalog review starts today.  This is my personal opinion of each album in Sabbath's discography.  If your opinion differs, by all means voice it.  Let's debate which song was better, which album had more impact, let your voice be heard.

Overview:

                I’m not going to get into the backstory of Black Sabbath, that’s what Wikipedia is for.  I will say that the fact that they started out as a blues band (with six members, one had a saxophone) shines through in much of their work, especially their earlier stuff.  This was a time before “heavy metal” was “heavy metal”.  Sabbath was creating a genre from their blues roots by playing heavier and louder than everyone else.  What could have been a gimmick turned into a genre, and this album is where it started. 

This album is the time period personified.  The songs were long, each “side” of the album only containing a few tracks each, but within each song there are a multitude of little parts that makes each one epic in nature.  This is obviously the case for the “combined” songs like “A Bit of Finger/Sleeping Village”, but it is also true for songs like “Black Sabbath” or “Wicked World” that are complete songs in their own right, but contain different pieces and parts to make up the whole.  They start out one way and morph into something else along the way, changing tempo and style mid-song.  It’s pretty easy to do this when you have musicians that were as good at their individual instruments as Sabbath had in the Butler/Ward/Iommi trio. 

Tracks you may know: 

“Black Sabbath”:  I mean, come on.  From the moment you hear the opening sequence of rain, to that guitar lick, this is a song that transports you back in time, whether it is to when it debuted in 1970 or whenever you first heard it (for me it was the mid to late 90’s).  I was never a huge fan of this track growing up because I couldn’t stand the plodding nature of the opening half.  As I got older though, the more I listen to it the more I love it.  I realize that that opening half is just a vehicle to get you to Tony Iommi’s guitar work at the end.   

“NIB”:  For a song supposedly about Bill Ward’s “nib” of a beard, the thing that many people focus on is the phrase “my name is Lucifer, please take my hand” when discounting Sabbath as Satanist devil-worshippers.  Just listen to the song, listen to the music in the song, and try not to dance along, it’s catchy as all hell.

Tracks you should know:

“A bit of finger/Sleeping village”:  I love the unsung heroes of this album, the tracks that were either too long to shave down for the radio, or just a little too complicated.  This is one of those tracks that is just a bit too long and too weird.  It keeps with the creepy vibe established with “Black Sabbath” but makes a nice break into a showcase for Tony Iommi’s guitar work (bit of finger) before slinking back into the meat of the song (sleeping village).  It has a great bluesy feel to it, a lot more than any other track on the album, and is a nice way to close things out.

My personal favorite:

“The Wizard”:  While all of the above qualify, I would have to go with “The Wizard”.  It’s the shortest track on the album and the opening harmonica part is another one of those sounds (like the rain in “Black Sabbath” or the bells in AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells”) that just gets you in the mood for the song.  Bill Ward’s drum part on this song is exceptional as well (but the fact that Bill Ward was awesome isn’t really news). 

Album rating: 

The fact that this was so lowly regarded upon its release is a mystery to me.  Sometimes we can look back on a band’s debut album and realize that it really wasn’t as good as where they wound up.  With Black Sabbath Black Sabbath is at the top of their game from the get-go.  The combination of traditional blues coupled with a slower, heavier pace, punctuated by Iommi’s bursts of guitar makes for an instantly recognizable and deeply influential sound.

10/10