Black Sabbath Reform!

It’s no exaggeration to say that Black Sabbath invented metal: sure there was a rich tapestry of riffs, tracks and aesthetics that had foreshadowed the metal formula, but no band brought it all together in one definitive package quite like Sabbath. Their self-titled debut is a masterpiece, not renowned for its hits (although “N.I.B” is a fearsome anthem), but it’s tonal and thematic hegemony. Black Sabbath was ungodly heavy, with each crunching riff you can practically feel an iron grip upon your shoulders driving you slowly, but relentlessly, down. The assault has a wonderful grinding quality, if forces the listener into submission through it’s sheer weight (hence heavy metal).

Far from a mere collection of lumbering riffs, Sabbath’s debut was wildly ambitious, exuding morbid atmospherics at every turn. The title track, for example, starts with heavy down pour of rain and marries an ominously encroaching riff to the lone chimes of a church bell. Ozzy far from a passenger proved just as vital as Iommi and Butler, firstly he looked the part, and secondly he wailed (constantly out of his own range) giving his voice a hauntingly shrill quality, somewhere between a beaten banshee and crowing preacher. Black Sabbath were of course of their time, and “The Wizard” and “Evil Woman, Don’t Play Your Games With Me” have the swagger of post-Zeppelin blues-rock, but they both remain some how bleaker and more despairing, no matter how delicious Butler’s basslines and Iommi’s licks happen to be.

Four months later, in the winter of 1970, it was time for Sabbath to move on from cultish atmospherics and into the world of genuine hit making. Paranoid put all the pieces together and codified the Sabbath formula in an album that seamlessly placed freak out inducing hammer horror jams (“Faries Wear Boots” and “Planet Caravan”) alongside genuine pop singles. “Paranoid” was a relentless character study, “Iron Man” was a one riff monster, and “War Pigs” (despite it’s laughable opening line) was a lurching goliath that permanently set in place metal’s counter culture, anti-authority, outsider persona.

From then on in, the Sabbath of Osbourne and Iommi would release two more classic LPs, Masters Of Reality and Black Sabbath Vol.4, albums that didn’t particularly forward Sabbath artistically, but rather highlighted Iommi’s remarkable riff writing capacity and Osbourne’s flair for atmospherics.

Off record, Sabbath did pretty much everything right, the photo shoots were suitably gothic, recalling occult séances and the imagery of classic British horror, decrepit Tudor country house, decaying woods and wraith-ish pale figures dressed in black. The band themselves dressed head to toe in black, and became magnets for outraged reaction and critical disdain (a bias that wouldn’t be shaken for the best part of twenty years).

Today we recognize that Sabbath, along with Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, set in place all the archetypes that would codify the heavy metal genre up until the arrival of punk and second wave of British metal. Sabbath’s influence has distilled down the years to the point where, like The Beatles, pointing out their influence on any one metal band is practically redundant.

As time progressed and Black Sabbath struggled to produce the great albums of their early years, the band perfected their live act, and with the fear factor thoroughly removed, they embraced the kind of showmanship and feel good crowd interaction that all stadium sized headliners at one point or another rely upon. Force of personality and the sheer scale of their sound took hold, allowing Sabbath, and Ozzy via Ozzfest, to become the great grandfathers and caretakers of all things metal, using their name, and their legacy, to elevate others in return.