Black Sabbath - Black sabbath (Vinyl)

Description

"Artists like Jimi Hendrix, Cream and Led Zeppelin had spent the late Sixties edging into darker, denser terrain, but it was Black Sabbath who made heavy a way of life. When their debut album, Black Sabbath, hit U.K. record stores in February 1970 — on a Friday the 13th to capitalize on the album’s unsettling look and sound — it showed the world what “heavy” really meant. The album sleeve depicted a witchy-looking woman holding a black cat in a supernatural world, and the music inside delivered on the cover’s mysteriousness. In between the LP’s stark, gothic, crushing riffs and dusky psychedelia, Osbourne detailed a date with the devil (“N.I.B.”), sang the praises of a benevolent sorcerer (“The Wizard”), and narrated more scenes of terror, like a “sleeping wall of remorse [that] turns your body to a corpse” (“Behind the Wall of Sleep”). The U.S. edition of the album, which arrived that June, improved on the original release by swapping in a lightning bolt of a blues track about the evils of society (“Wicked World”) in favor of the cover song “Evil Woman.” On each opus, Iommi, Butler, and Ward summoned monoliths of sound, wrenching their riffs about with abandon. The record was dark, direct, and raw — a true original. Now, with 50 years’ worth of hindsight, you can hear that the album represented the start of a new epoch. Without Black Sabbath, Metallica wouldn’t have had the blueprint to write “Enter Sandman.” Judas Priest might never have broken the law, Iron Maiden wouldn’t have run to the hills, and Slayer would have never reigned in blood. These bands might have existed (Judas Priest did exist at the time of Sabbath’s debut), but it’s hard to imagine that any of it would have sounded the same. The echoes of the macabre imagery, powerful guitar riffs, and athletic drumming on Black Sabbath haven’t just rippled through the music of bands like Slipknot, Rage Against the Machine, and Pantera; they’ve also made their way into punk, indie rock, and even hip-hop. Yet on its own, Black Sabbath still sounds unique. If a Martian were to land on Earth and ask, “What is heavy metal?” the best answer would be to play “Black Sabbath.” But because so much music has drawn inspiration from Black Sabbath, it’s difficult to imagine how the band started, where its members came from, why they sounded so morbid. These days, the band’s status as the progenitors of heavy metal is practically undisputed. But a half-century ago, they were the furthest thing from legends, just four scrappy roughnecks from Birmingham, England, playing the blues. So to mark the 50-year anniversary of the group’s paradigm-shifting album, Black Sabbath’s members, collaborators, peers, admirers, and the acts they covered have all taken a moment to reflect here for a thorough accounting of how the group came to define the metal genre. “There is no doubt in my mind that Sabbath invented what we know as the start of true and pure heavy metal,” Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford says. “Without them, the genre may never have come to be.”Limited Edition, Reissue, Purple And Black Splattered