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Wheels of Confusion reduces the idea of the riff to its bare minimum. The sleeve thanks “the great COKE-Cola Company of Los Angeles”, and you can hear it: Vol 4 is a powder-blown record, blank and unrelenting, grinding its teeth. For many years, virtually every critic fell into the second camp. You didn’t think it was OK you thought it was the greatest thing ever. The title track! Iron Man! Rhyming “masses” with “masses” on War Pigs! The second Sabbath album was a leap into a different dimension from their debut: a huge, grim, monolithic edifice that brooked no doubt. And Osbourne, rarely an expressive singer, was at his best here.

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Symptom of the Universe barrels along, before reaching a fabulous acoustic section – it is an album full of invention. The last of the run of great albums (the fact you can see drummer Bill Ward’s underpants through his wife’s red tights on the cover is a handy metaphor for a band that was about to lose its grip), and still fantastic. You can still hear the blues-rock band they had been – The Wizard Evil Woman, Don’t Play Your Games With Me an interminable cover of Aynsley Dunbar’s Warning – which makes it an album of greater promise than reality. Black Sabbath (1970)Ī tolling bell, the sound of pouring rain, then the riff that changed everything: Black Sabbath invented an entire worldview within the first 60 seconds of their debut. But what could have been a productive 80s was derailed by rows about the mix (Iommi accused Dio of sneaking back to the studio at night to turn his vocals up) and by Dio’s departure. Mob Rules (1981)Īfter the success of Heaven and Hell (1980), Sabbath essentially made the same album again, just not quite as well. It didn’t scale the original heights, but 13 was miles better than anyone dared expect. The original foursome reconvened for the first time since 1978 – and for the first record by any Sabbath lineup since 1995 – under the guidance of producer Rick Rubin, who fairly evidently told them there was only one thing people wanted Black Sabbath to do: sound like Black Sabbath. It’s hit and miss, but it’s still better than almost everything from 1981 onwards. The title track has garage-band rawness Air Dance is – dare one say it – oddly beautiful. The final album of the original Ozzy era has a terrible reputation, but it’s a quirky and enjoyable record, as long as you don’t expect Sabbath Even Bloodier Sabbath. Of course, Gillan’s lyrics were awful and very un-Sabbath, but it was the best record he had been involved in since his time in Deep Purple. Actually, it’s pretty good: Ian Gillan, whose only recordings with the band these were, still had his voice, and the other three are pretty focused. Born Again (1983)Īccording to Sabbath mythology, Born Again should have been smothered at birth. It’s no Master of Reality, but it was the best Sabbath album since the early 80s. Cross Purposes (1994)įor the first time in more than decade, Sabbath sounded like a contemporary metal band, rather than a group trying to sound like a contemporary metal band (and on Cardinal Sin, Iommi and Butler gave Martin the kind of preposterously epic setting that Dio had deserved). Photograph: Larry Marano/Getty Images 12. Back Street Kids may back his claim, but most of the rest of Technical Ecstasy was a mess. Given it was recorded in June 1976, that suggests they were either way ahead of the curve, or that Butler is mistaken.

Technical Ecstasy (1976)īutler claimed Technical Ecstasy was Sabbath responding to punk. It’s perfectly serviceable, but Martin was an identikit metal singer: he sings about Satan with all the menace of someone offering cheese samples at Morrisons deli counter. They can make the case, but they’re wrong. Some Sabbath loyalists make a case for Headless Cross being a neglected classic. It often felt, though, as if the rest of the band were sanding down their leader’s riffs to fit an 80s template. The first album with singer Tony Martin opened with an Iommi riff that offered hope of redemption: The Shining was more polished than, say, Wheels of Confusion, but it suggested Sabbath might be able to claw their way out of their hole. The riffs are conventional mainstream metal: it would have sounded perfectly of its time five years earlier, but by 1990 – with Ozzy Osbourne-era Sabbath being exhumed by grunge and stoner bands – something more like the band of 20 years before might have hit home a lot harder. The 15th Sabbath album doesn’t sound much like Sabbath at all. Geoff Nicholls, Tony Iommi, Dave Spitz, Eric Singer and Glenn Hughes in 1985.