Like a brewing storm, Brummies Black Sabbath ended the happy era of the late '60 with a black blanket, smothering the sun and belching black smoke. Saabbath are metal's greatest and heaviest band ever. A lumbering, psychedelic, ominous, bleak and kaleidoscopic nightmare, fuelled by Tony Iommi's immense riffs, Bill Ward's thunderclap drums and Geezer Butler's pounding bass-lines, and last but not least, Ozzy's demonic wails, one minute a yawning banshee forewarning of an impending doom, the next a mourning ethereal cry at some funeral battered by rain and heavy, swirling fog.From it's haunting cover of a ghostly witch-like femme fatale standing in the undergrowth as a pallid structure looks on, this remains one of the greatest albums of all time. This is lead weight lunacy, a natural dreamscape from Birmingham's satanic industries, England's miserable seasons and drug-induced hell. This is scary stuff,from the opening bell tolls of the opening title track, you just know that doom is around the corner and immediately you fed disturbed visions of wasted landscapes, cursed ruins and eerie shadows, a trip with Satan no doubt on the way when you sleep.
The track 'Black Sabbath' is not your average dark epic, but something so deeply sombre in its simplicity yet its lyrics, battered by rain and blackened by gathering storm clouds pull you into a void of despair. 'The Wizard' offers an almost merry relief, but then again so did the film 'The Wicker Man' until you were led astray but its clandestine intentions. Every track is a vast plain of sludge, folkloric connotation and emotional evil, 'N.I.B.' a relentless pounding on the door, Ozzy acting as some kind of maddening storyteller as the tremendous soundtrack bellows away behind him, shaking the speakers.
Seven tracks of demonic, diabolical majesty were born and punctuated the '70s like some morbid warning so severe that we've not recovered since.
10/10
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