Showing posts with label Tony Iommi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tony Iommi. Show all posts

Black Sabbath's 'Sabotage': Anger is an energy

Classic album from metal pioneers hits a milestone
By Peter Lindblad

Black Sabbath's sixth studio
album 'Sabotage'
Nobody's going to lie about Sabotage's age. The sixth studio album by heavy metal godfathers Black Sabbath did, indeed, turn 40 last week in late July, but it's hard to imagine Ozzy Osbourne, Bill Ward, Geezer Butler and Tony Iommi throwing a party in its honor.

Born out of anger and frustration over ongoing litigation with former manager Patrick Meehan, 1975's Sabotage, perhaps the most underrated of Sabbath's acclaimed "first six" albums, was recorded at Morgan Studios in London. The whole soul-sucking process seemed to take an eternity, as Ozzy would lament in his autobiography, saying that "Sabotage took about four thousand years" to make. Ozzy got so fed up by the whole experience that the singer, who rarely wrote lyrics for Sabbath, penned what amounted to a scathing "diss" track with "The Writ," which asked if Meehan was actually Satan or a man and posited the confrontational query: "What kind of people do you think we are? Another joker who's a rock and roll star for you/Just for you." It was a rhetorical question for Ozzy.

Hyperbole aside, the interminable sessions for Sabotage, only made more exhausting by the band's legal entanglements, caused no shortage of headaches. Butler is quoted in the liner notes to Reunion, the band's 1988 live album, as saying that "music became irrelevant to me." And yet, it's clear from listening to Sabotage, even all these years later, that Black Sabbath put a great deal of care into making it. Although intent on continuing down a primrose path that would lead them further into prog-rock temptation – "Supertzar" is practically a choral piece, with grand arrangements and the London Philharmonic Choir wailing and moaning in sinister fashion in chasing a striking Iommi riff like spectral hunting dogs – Sabotage is a record that has a hot temper, the very title suggesting that Sabbath was sick and tired of being screwed over. And raw emotions have often fueled great rock 'n' roll.

Frayed nerves and all, and perhaps on the cusp of a collective nervous breakdown, the original Sabbath lineup muddled through Sabotage's difficult birth and, in the process, broke new ground in terms of songwriting structures and musical innovation. Although not exactly immediately accessible, Sabotage has endured, slowly becoming a fan favorite, even as everyone laughed at its ludicrous album art and Bill Ward in his red tights. An arty concept gone horribly wrong, although, to be fair, this seemed to happen a lot with Sabbath, the cover of Sabotage ranks right up there with those of Paranoid and Never Say Die! for sheer absurdity.

 It's a journey with odd detours, including the completely out-of-character synth-pop flatulence of the universally hated "Am I Going Insane." Thankfully, it's the only real misstep here, although another confounding turn takes place after the opener "Hole In the Sky" essentially draws up the blueprints for stoner metal, with its heavy swing and charged, churning riffage. In a bizarre bit of sequencing, an instrumental titled "Don't Start (Too Late)" follows, allowing Iommi to display his prowess on acoustic guitar, as he pieces together complex little puzzles with an easy, smooth dexterity that proves, once and for all, that he's more than just a master of riffs. Which is great, except that any momentum gained from "Hole In The Sky" is stalled momentarily for an interlude that probably should have arrived in the middle of Sabotage, rather than at the beginning.

Enter "Symptom of the Universe," the proto-thrash beast that seeks and destroys, inspiring Metallica and the rest of its ilk to rise up from the gutter and revolt against everything '80s glam-metal represented. Trace the origins of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and here is where you end up, and yet, somewhere along the way, Sabbath decides the track needs a jaunty acoustic jam that seems to fly directly in the face of its evil, menacing riff.

All of this kind of works in a weird way, but upon its release, Sabotage must have been somewhat off-putting, although the forceful, straightforward push and solar-powered flashes of "The Thrill Of It All" and "Megalomania" seem to suggest a more grounded Sabbath that has freed itself from the shackles of doom and gloom. And then there's Ozzy's blazing vocals on "The Writ," so powerful and commanding. Of course, Sabotage precipitated a sad decline, their creative powers eroded by drug use that was the stuff of legend. They would recover, but not until Ronnie James Dio arrived. Sabotage was then, in some regard, a link to past glories, a life line for fans who wondered afterward if the old Sabbath was ever coming back. These days, even if it's not on the level of say Masters Of Reality or Vol. 4, it's damn close.
– Peter Lindblad

Original Black Sabbath catalog available digitally

Black Sabbath's '70s catalog is
now available through iTunes
Black Sabbath is finally going digital.

For the first time, the full catalog from the original lineup is now available digitally in the United States, having been remastered specifically for iTunes. The increased audio fidelity is supposed to replicate more closely what the artists, recording engineers and producers had in mind when making the records.

"It's about f--king time the first eight Black Sabbath albums were made available on iTunes in the U.S., said Ozzy Osbourne.

Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi added, "Great news, been a long time trying to explain to fans why the music wasn't available."

Available exclusively on the iTunes Store worldwide (www.iTunes.com/BlackSabbath), The Complete Studio Albums 1970-1978 can be purchased in one newly created downloadable bundle. Fans can also choose to download the eight legendary studio albums, two classic compilations, or simply purchase each song individually.

Black Sabbath: The Complete Studio Albums 1970-1978 features the band's collected studio work for Warner Bros. Records from the 1970s. Among the offerings are the band's groundbreaking self-titled debut from 1970, 1970's Paranoid, 1971's Master of Reality, 1972's Vol. 4, 1973's Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, 1975's Sabotage, 1976's Technical Ecstasy, and 1978's Never Say Die!.

Compilations We Sold Our Soul for Rock 'N' Roll (1976) and 2006's Greatest Hits 1970-1978 are also available. 

The reunited original Sabbath lineup, minus Bill Ward of course, will soon return to North America on its latest tour, following runs through both North and South America, Australia, Asia and Europe. 
This latest round of North American tour dates starts March 31 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY, and will take the doom-metal godfathers through 10 cities in Canada, including Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton. The trek ends April 26 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, CA. 

These dates will be part of the band's final shows of their 2013-2014 world our in support of 13, their first studio album in 35 years.

DVD Review: Black Sabbath – Live ... Gathered in Their Masses

DVD Review: Black Sabbath – Live … Gathered in Their Masses
Vertigo/Republic
All Access Rating: B+

Black Sabbath - Live ... Gathered in Their
Masses 2013
Darkness had spread across Australia in the spring of 2013, as the originators of doom metal, Black Sabbath, brought their live, and fairly ancient considering their advanced age, evil to the land "Down Under." 

Meteorologists may not have had an explanation for the atmospheric anomaly, but the reunited original Sabbath lineup – except drummer Bill Ward, that is – did. They had embarked on a world tour in support of their comeback album 13, one of 2013's most critically acclaimed metal albums, and Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Ward's replacement, ex-Rob Zombie and Alice Cooper tub-thumper Tommy Clufetos, rode into Melbourne like the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse." 

It wasn't the end of days. Grizzled, yet fully capable of churning through and grinding out old sonic blasphemies and new abominations alike with a tenacious spirit, Sabbath just needed a place to practice their dark arts. On April 29 and May 1, Melbourne audiences were able to witness what might be their last chance to see Sabbath's unholy trinity do their worst. The filmmakers who shot the amplified, electrifying "Live … Gathered in Their Masses" must have been thinking along those lines as well.

As is the case with most, but not all, concert DVDs these days, high-definition cameras were used to sharply and vividly capture Sabbath, awash in purple and blue hues, rolling through its set list like a Sherman tank. While briefly shedding a light on what goes on behind the scenes at the start, the film slams forward, with Sabbath diving headlong into "War Pigs" with an appropriate amount of blood lust. Slogging through the heavy sludge of "Loner" and raging through "God Is Dead," off the new LP, with the sinewy muscle of men half their age, Butler and Iommi plunder their blackened past with confident and brutal efficiency, relentlessly kicking with scuffed boots at the still red-hot embers of "Iron Man," "Symptom of the Universe," "Snowblind," "N.I.B." and "Fairies Wear Boots" and slowly coaxing them into burning conflagrations of oily, industrialized metal that Sabbath bulldozes into piles of smoldering ruins as the fires die down.

Lenses smartly seek out Butler and Iommi, instinctively catching them in action as the bassist thunders and gallops along to every bludgeoned, crusty riff or every spell of solo wizardry that blasts its way out of Iommi's bottomless bag of tricks. And yet when they want to build the kind of gallows drama that plays out in a condemned man's head the night before his execution, the pair tease, in the most torturous manner possible, the haunted "Black Sabbath" as it crawls along like a death sentence, as does this viscous, "head pounding against a wall" version of "Into the Void."

Still a deranged cheerleader, Ozzy, on the other hand, is not the strongest vocalist anymore, and his incessant yammering on about not being able to hear the crowd roar its appreciation becomes somewhat distracting, grating and tiresome. Still, there is some demonic life left in that ravaged, frail voice, and when it comes to interpreting Sabbath's most horrific Satanic verses in his uniquely insane manner, nobody compares to Ozzy. All in all, "Live ... Gathered in Their Masses," available as a single DVD or a CD/DVD version, finds Sabbath possibly making a last punishing stand as Butler, Iommi and Ozzy confront their own mortality. If they are nearing the end, this powerhouse concert DVD will testify to their explosive potency as a live act, even as most of their contemporaries have long since retired. http://www.republicrecords.com/
– Peter Lindblad




CD Review: Black Sabbath – 13

CD Review: Black Sabbath – 13
Universal Republic
All Access Rating: A-

Black Sabbath - 13 2013
13 is a matter of life and death for Black Sabbath. The harsh truth of the matter is the godfathers of heavy metal may not be long for this world. 

Tony Iommi’s cancer scare has certainly given them pause to consider their own mortality, and if Iommi is to be believed, it was his health concerns that led Sabbath to move on without original drummer Bill Ward and get 13 made with someone else – namely, Brad Wilk, of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave fame. Time waits for no one, not even Black Sabbath.

The grim reaper hasn’t come knocking on their doors just yet, however. As 13 proves, Sabbath is, thankfully, still alive and kicking up a monstrous racket of doom-laden metal that’s reminiscent of that haunting and truly unsettling first album that signaled such a turbulent sea change in rock music back in 1970. Rife with meditations on dying and the afterlife, as well as existential thoughts on whether the Almighty still has a pulse, 13 is the heaviest, blackest tar Sabbath has stirred in decades, just as producer Rick Rubin intended. And yet, some of that sludge Sabbath is so famous for has been washed off. Cleaned off somewhat, the snarling, brass-knuckled sound of 13 is bone-crushing, as that serrated edge to Iommi’s crunching, growling riffs and his intensely focused solos saws through steel, throwing sparks into the air.

Inhabiting both heaven and hell, with sympathy for the devil and his Maker, the lurching 8:52 first single “God is Dead” seems to move in slow motion – as if sizing up its prey – right up to the bridge, which twists and swings like a bridge during an earthquake. Surging with energy, as Iommi’s guitar slashes like a broadsword, it seems as if Sabbath has discovered an ancient and evil groove, pulled out of the ground by its roots by Geezer Butler’s brawny bass lines and reanimated for the garment-rending, circling menace of “Live Forever.” That survival instinct is kicking in, although the grave doesn’t seem like such a bad option on 13.

Stretching out long past seven minutes, as most tracks on 13 do, the gnarled psychedelic-blues of “Damaged Soul” ponderously crawls through the wreckage of a life in ruins, while “Dear Father” is a slow, steady climb up a mountain of emotional garbage – the remains of a broken relationship with a not-so loving parent. And “Loner” is almost as depressing, as Iommi stacks cement blocks of riffs to create a movable wall of thick, impenetrable sound – the kind the subject of the song might build internally to shut out the outside world.

Mangled guitars, writhing bass lines and crashing drums surround Ozzy Osbourne’s rather dour vocals, which fits 13’s downtrodden mood like a velvet glove. Shifts in tempo and melodic current occur, but they are not abrupt. Sabbath flows easily from detour to detour, never needing a GPS to find their way back to the main road – although it’s easy to get lost in the lush, mysterious “Zeitgeist,” the snaky conga drums and brushed acoustic guitars bringing to mind “Planet Caravan.” Sabbath’s past is omnipresent on 13, which makes the whole musical direction of the record seem calculated and not as naturally or organically inspired as perhaps it should appear.

Nevertheless, 13 is a lucky number for Sabbath. With its tenacious hooks, the album bearing those numerals has given them their first No. 1 record in 43 years. Maybe God isn’t dead after all. http://www.republicrecords.com/
    Peter Lindblad

CD Review: Deep Purple – Now What?!


CD Review: Deep Purple  – Now What?!
earMusic/Eagle Rock Entertainment
All Access Review: A-

Deep Purple - Now What?! 2013
Cracks were starting to appear in the foundation. Deep Purple, Mark II, was crumbling, as exhaustion from a non-stop cycle of touring and recording were beginning to take their toll. On top of that, internal dysfunction – mostly between guitar wizard Ritchie Blackmore and singer Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover – was tearing them apart, and yet, they somehow managed to slog through 1973’s rather limp and uninspired death knell Who Do We Think We Are, even though they did come out with guns blazing in the electrifying “Woman from Tokyo.” 

This was the end of Gillan’s association with Deep Purple, at least until 1984’s Perfect Strangers, and Mark II went out with a whimper.

That was 30 years ago. Today, with Blackmore’s time in Deep Purple a distant memory, the proto-metal legends return with their first studio album since 2005, Now What?! The punctuation is appropriately emphatic. Whether it’s an exasperated question they’re asking of themselves or a dare to anyone who thinks they can’t deliver the goods anymore, the title of their latest effort – produced by Bob Ezrin – is open to interpretation. What is clear is that, with guitarist Steve Morse having long since settled into his role as Blackmore’s successor, something Tommy Bolin initially struggled with, Deep Purple is completely comfortable in its own skin and capable of generating audacious instrumental fireworks.

Winding its way through labyrinthine passages and flying over contoured soundscapes, What Now?! can be mysterious and exotic. With orchestral string flourishes vehemently slashing through the air, “Out of Hand” is a cinematic marvel reminiscent of Gillan’s recent WhoCares recordings with Tony Iommi and Zeppelin’s “Kashmir,” as is the ornate “Uncommon Man,” although the ever-shifting moods and tempos make it more of a relic of ‘70s progressive-rock pomp and circumstance than anything else. The same can also be said of “Apres Vous” and “Weirdistan,” both widescreen prog epics that allow Morse and keyboardist Don Airey plenty of opportunity to stretch out and experiment with strange, alien sounds.

On the other hand, in the tradition of classic Mark II Purple, the energetic rocker “Hell to Pay” – stuck in overdrive and running hot – boasts plenty of horsepower, while the smoldering “Blood from a Stone,” with soulful vocals from Gillan, is dark and jazzy, with Airey’s keyboards falling like rain, just as Ray Manzarek’s did in The Doors’ classic “Riders on the Storm.” The bluesy ballad “All the Time in the World” is standard-issue, however, and far less intoxicating, standing in sharp contrast to the mesmerizing fury of “A Simple Song” and the colorful, lively funk grooves of “Bodyline.” Although lacking a signature track, like “Smoke on the Water” or even “Knocking at Your Back Door,” What Now?! effectively holds listeners’ interest in other ways.

In fine voice, Gillan is as expressive as ever, even if he doesn’t quite have the range he used to, but it’s Airey and Morse who garner the most attention – Airey with his forceful, swirling Hammond organ dust storms that pay tribute to the dearly departed Jon Lord and Morse with his solid riffing and classy, finessed leads, the product of a wonderful imagination and great dexterity. Who do they think they are? Why, it’s Deep Purple … that’s who, and the reinvigorated musical interplay between these prodigious talents is remarkably exciting. If this, combined with a well-timed recent episode of VH1’s “Behind the Music” regaling us with their glorious, and oftentimes fractious, history, does not get them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, nothing will.
 – Peter Lindblad

CD Review: WhoCares: Ian Gillan, Tony Iommi & Friends

WhoCares: Ian Gillan, Tony Iommi & Friends
Armoury Records
All Access Review: B

Across the WhoCares marquee, in big, bold letters, read the names Ian Gillan and Tony Iommi, icons of a bygone time in rock history. Any pairing of the groundbreaking Black Sabbath guitarist and, for all intents and purposes, the voice of Deep Purple — with apologies to David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes — is bound to raise a few eyebrows, just as it did in 1983 when Gillan joined Sabbath for heavy metal's version of "Plan 9 From Outer Space," the laughably awful LP Born Again and its "Spinal Tap"-like supporting tour.

Long considered the worst album in Black Sabbath's otherwise awe-inspiring monolith of a catalog, Born Again was a debacle — Gillan's hairy-chested bluesy vocals ill-suited for Sabbath's trademark gloom and doom, a problem made even worse by lackluster songwriting. Even the album cover, that demonic infant born with devil horns, fangs for teeth and sharp claws, proved to be comic fodder. And yet, here we, almost 30 years later, with Gillan and Iommi back together to rewrite the wrongs of the past — or at least trying to get by with a little help from their friends — and make some money for charity. Again into the abyss, the two legends gain a measure of redemption with the WhoCares project, whose purpose is to raise money for the music school of Gyumari, Armenia, an area still struggling to recover from the devastation wrought by a horrendous earthquake in 1998.

A two-song digital single, WhoCares features the tracks "Out of My Mind" and "Holy Water," the former an epic, heavy-duty collision of the thick, crushing riffage of Iommi and HIM guitarist Mikko "Linde" Lindstrom, the insistent, surging keyboard swells of Gillan's old Deep Purple mate Jon Lord and the monstrously huge rhythmic wrecking ball swung over and over by Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain and former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted. As for Gillan, he doesn't sound as out of place here as he did on Born Again. There's a seething undertone of menacing madness in his vocals that rises and falls with every pummeling sonic wave, with a seething Gillan dramatically expressing the scrambled thoughts of a man losing his grip on sanity as nightmarish imagery flashes in his brain. Unexpectedly, Gillan seems to have picked up on that undefinable "it" that made Ozzy Osbourne's vocals work so well with Iommi's unique hammer-of-the-gods guitar work.

"Holy Water," though, is more tailored to what Gillan does best. The star power dimming on "Holy Water" — as the supergroup of "Out of My Mind" gives way to less prominent musicians, like guitar duo Steve Morris and Michael Lee, drummer Randy Clarke, bassist Rodney Appleby and keyboardist Jesse O'Brien — Gillan gives a more reflective, contemplative performance, finding solace and comfort in that "Holy Water" that drowns so many alcoholics. An exotic, dreamy, Middle Eastern intro, perfect for a movie about the politics of that war-torn region starring George Clooney, wafts through the air until smashing headlong into a powerful, bluesy train of Hammond organ, noisy guitars and steely bass and drums that slows in the verses, riding on golden rails of acoustic guitar, and then chugs full-steam ahead toward its destination. It's a song that looks ahead, while still managing to seem full of regret and haunted by a troubled past. And Gillan perfectly captures that combination of hopeful yearning and  twinges of repressed pain in thoughtful singing that can only come with years of bold living.

Still, neither track would ever approach the proto-metal classics that Gillan and Iommi recorded with Purple or Sabbath. There's a slow, but strong, current that pulls "Out of My Mind" along that is magnificent to behold,and while able to roll along through one's mind like the Danube, the song labors and meanders to the finish, despite some beautifully drawn twin guitar work from Iommi and Lindstrom near the end. And while there is character, grace and guts in "Holy Water," it's a fairly bland offering that lacks a memorable melody and doesn't seem to notice it is traveling down a road to nowhere. Still, with Iommi and Gillan both drifting outside their comfort zones, the pair seem energized by their reunion and willing to explore new horizons, even as they bask, somewhat, in the glories of their respective histories.

The enhanced CD is fleshed out with a 30-minute, behind-the-scenes documentary of the recording sessions — plus a video for "Out of My Mind" — and it offers interesting insight into the project, inspired by Iommi and Gillan's trips to Armenia to see the damage and recovery for themselves. In a way it perhaps mirrors the motivation Iommi and Gillan might have had in trying to fulfill the potential they saw in their partnership the first time they joined forces back in 1983.

-Peter Lindblad

CD / DVD Review: Heaven & Hell "Neon Nights: 30 Years of Heaven & Hell"

CD / DVD Review: Heaven & Hell "Neon Nights: 30 Years of Heaven & Hell"

Eagle Vision/Armoury Records
All Access Review: A-

Ozzy Osbourne was gone, and this time, he wasn’t coming back, at least not until the “all is forgotten” reunions that would, perhaps inevitably, come years later. Black Sabbath had moved on with Ronnie James Dio, but not everyone was ready to welcome the new vocal sorcerer with open arms.

As Dio remembers it, in an interview included with the new Heaven & Hell live DVD, crowds that came to the first shows featuring the reconstituted Sabbath lineup greeted him not with a pleasant “hello,” but with middle fingers pointed straight at him. Acceptance would come grudgingly, as fans started to realize that it was Dio who was helping usher in a period of restoration for Sabbath, the 1981 classic, fire-and-brimstone LP Heaven & Hell letting all know that a slumbering heavy-metal giant, wracked by substance abuse, personal problems and creative dissension, had awakened.

The world of metal is still in mourning Dio’s death, having lost one of its most spellbinding voices and imaginative lyricists earlier this year. On July 30, 2009, the Dio-period Sabbath, now christened Heaven & Hell, performed at the famed Wacken Open Air Festival in Germany, still riding high on the warm reception, from fans and critics alike, given their deliciously evil 2008 comeback album The Devil You Know. They had lost none of that old black magic, as the new “Neon Nights: 30 Years of Heaven & Hell” DVD and its companion CD so poignantly bears out.

Time stood still that night as Heaven & Hell, consisting of Dio, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Vinny Appice, bulldozed and bludgeoned its way through a set of well-chosen numbers from their glorious, and somewhat underappreciated, past. From the opening instrumental “E5150,” only on the DVD version, Heaven & Hell crash headlong into the violent brutality of “Mob Rules,” before steering their ship straight into the massive rogue wave of riffs and melodic undertow that is “Children of the Sea,” making it sound as epic and majestic as ever, and coming out the other end on the shores of some distant land as rampaging marauders in an especially mean version of “I.”

It’s a breathless beginning, and it only gets better from there. A punishing “Bible Black” is followed by an even heavier “Time Machine” and their latest crushing missive from the depths of hell, “Fear,” with Dio giving it his all and Iommi roaming his way through a tight, fluid little solo that packs a big punch. All of this is captured in crystal-clear video and rich sound, cameras sweeping over and around the action like fighter jets, providing wide views of both the colorfully lit stage – with a giant fiery cow’s skull above the fray – and the endless throng of people gathered at Wacken to get a glimpse of a band that was not at all ready for the grave. The editing is smooth and seamless, putting to good use the wonderful variety of camera angles to emphasize the band’s still potent musicianship – Appice’s thundering drum solo and the beautifully framed close-ups on Iommi and Butler blazing away are not be taken lightly, especially true with the mesmerizing sonic adventure Iommi takes listeners on prior to the raging “Die Young” – and its flair for the dramatic.

As an epitaph, this is as good as it gets, even if it’s difficult to make out what Dio is saying between songs and you can’t help but miss perhaps the greatest achievement of this Sabbath lineup, “Sign of the Southern Cross.” They make up for it, though, with a soaring “Heaven & Hell” that stampedes to a wonderfully chaotic meltdown.

Choosing between the two, the DVD – and its 13 songs, compared to 11 on CD, both including a nice color booklet with a few photos and a well-written history of Dio’s time with Sabbath – is the way to go here, though the CD is an aurally magnificent recording. Actually seeing onscreen this timeless foursome, still breathing fire, live again and enjoying the moment, is priceless, and 30th anniversary interviews with all four members, conducted by venerable metal media king Eddie Trunk, are full of great behind-the-scenes war stories from the past and the kind of wry humor that always comes as a surprise from four men known for some of the gloomiest, most horrifically doom-laden music ever conceived.

-Peter Lindblad




Hands Of Doom: Black Sabbath’s Bill Ward looks back on ‘Paranoid’

A storm was brewing on the northwest coast of England around 1969 and 1970, and it was moving inland fast.

The origins of this tempest, however, first stirred in the industrial wasteland of a city called Birmingham, where four scraggly, but wildly creative, young men were transforming the heavy blues of such legends as Cream and Blue Cheer into a new kind of minor-key sonic monster, a ponderous beast capable of pummeling of great pillars into pebbles with immense, explosive guitar riffs, pounding rhythms that buffeted and followed those powerfully struck chords to hell and a singer whose pained howl expressed horrors both real and imagined.
It was a scary, almost apocalyptic sound that both shocked and awed rock audiences in Cumbria, an English county that relied on the bounty of the Atlantic Ocean to eke out what was at times a meager existence. And they loved the devastatingly loud, sludgy dirges and hallucinogenic jams that were blasting out of the rugged amps of a then-unknown Black Sabbath that toured the area hard.

“We’d done a lot of work in northwest England in what they call Cambria,” remembers Sabbath drummer Bill Ward, “and without realizing it we built up quite a fan base in northwest England.” Playing to increasingly packed houses in the region, Sabbath cultivated a rabid, extremely loyal following that Ward believes put its collective shoulders to the band’s foggy, drug-addled, yet crushingly powerful and disturbingly spooky, self-titled debut, released in May 1970, and helped nudge it into the U.K. Top Ten album charts. All of which set the stage for Sabbath’s master stroke, Paranoid, also unleashed in 1970, in September of that year, and the subject of a new Eagle Vision “Classic Albums” series DVD as we approach its 40th anniversary.

“I was just amazed,” exclaims Ward. “I think [our debut] came in at No. 26 out of the Top 30. It was just like, ‘Oh my God.’ And it was something that, after all the years that you are playing on the stage and playing all the clubs, playing all the different places we had to play, comes as a surprise. So it was enormous, really. It was like, ‘Oh, wow. We’ve actually accomplished part of a dream,’ if you like. That was a big part of the dream, to get a hit record.”

But, why Cumbria? What was it about Sabbath’s bleak musical black magic, still in its infancy but growing more and more mature with each performance, that appealed to denizens of the area’s sparsely populated towns?  

Ward explains that, “On the west coast, the northwest coast of England, they’re mainly fishing villages. However, they’re very hard. It’s a very hard life, and it’s very hard weather. It’s a really tough place to be, working in Aspatria, Whitehaven … these are all tough towns. They’re granite. The houses are built of black granite. And so they actually look quite dismal when it’s raining with these black, monolithic houses that exist up there. They paint the landscape with granite silhouettes if you like. But at the same time, you can see the beauty in that as well, but there’s almost a sense of morbidity there that was … I know we were very attracted to playing there. We wanted to be there all the time (laughs). The biggest city in that specific area is Carlisle, and Carlisle is a fortress. It’s a fortress town. It’s right on the border of England and Scotland. So it’s got a lot of pagan history, and it just goes way back in time. And so [Sabbath guitarist] Tony [Iommi] and I used to live in Carlisle. We were in another band, but when we had Black Sabbath, we all loved Carlisle. That’s where a lot of our roots were in the beginning, to play our music. So, I don’t know. The people just, you know, really liked hard-core music.”

That’s putting it lightly. Ward compares Sabbath’s original fans in that area to the more intense ones you’d also find in places like New Jersey and Philadelphia. In other words, they’re extremely passionate about what they like.

“I think it was great in the sense that not much came up to that part of northwest England,” says Ward. “You know, there are rolling hills; it’s called the ‘lake district.’ There are lots of lakes there. There’s not a large population. It’s quite isolated. So, being up there, it was a real treat when a band went up there, and I loved the audiences around that area. And they loved it when rock bands would go up there and visit these different small towns and so on and so forth. It’s just a very fanatical crowd, and I like the Scots. The Scotsmen were the same way.” 

With momentum building among the black masses, Sabbath, true to its blue-collar roots, continued working. Touring was constant, and on the road, the quartet of Ward, Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and iconic metal vocalist Ozzy Osbourne jammed and wrote during the hours when they weren’t onstage. There was a bit of a break, though.

“Yeah, well, what was happening was, as we were playing more and more, we became more and more intuitive toward one another, and so, by the time we’d done our first album, we were continually on the road,” says Ward. “It didn’t stop us from jamming out. You know, we could jam out in hotel rooms. So we’d get ideas all the time.”

Their fertile imaginations working overtime, the men of Sabbath were becoming more and more cohesive as a unit, and when they did get a little window of time to exit the road, they decided to go to Monmouth in Monmouthshire, Wales, for more work.

“We actually took a week or maybe 10 days to rehearse some of our songs,” says Ward. “I’ll give you an example of that. I’ll always remember, we rehearsed ‘Electric Funeral,’ ‘Hand Of Doom’ and I think we did some of ‘War Pigs’ there as well. So we actually had - which had never happened to us before – rehearsals, just writing material for what was to be Paranoid. So, with the combination of having licks and different things in our heads and what have you, and also by now being a very intuitive band, when we played, we knew almost … I can’t describe it. We knew where the other person was going to go. We would often sit down and write something, and we’d all go to the same place at the same time. It was actually a little strange, a little scary. But without being too analytical, it was just something we had as a band that we were able to do that. We knew intuitively when to change, when we were going to go into a different place, you know. So it was really quite a ride in making a Black Sabbath track, you know.”

Deciding on a driver for the trip was easy. Everyone followed Iommi’s lead, the guitar wizard who seemed to be able to pluck innovative, instantly memorable riffs out of thin air. Ward and Iommi, both of them heavily influenced by what Ward called the “incredibly rich soil” of the British music scene of the 1960s, began playing in bands together at the age of 16. In Birmingham, Iommi was, even at that tender age, was as good as any guitarist in the city. In quick order, he moved past them all, fluidly navigating more complex pieces than the blues and rock standards of the day.

“I just watched him all his life, you know; observing from his later teenage years, he just shot up,” says Ward. “He just grew into this young songwriter, this riff master. His uncanny ability to come up with parts and pieces, and just even sometimes [with] three notes, and then they were so devastatingly good, they would just blow the rest of us away. I mean, just playing drums, as far as playing drums to the notes that he was playing, it was a drummer’s dream. It was the best job in the world. But then, of course, it was all about talent [allowed] to flourish when we started making more and more music. But it was a prime growth period for all of us, and definitely for Tony.”

However brief, that short rehearsal period, plus the nonstop gigging, prepared Sabbath well for the tight studio timeframe the band had to record Paranoid. Having booked just two days, Sabbath was ready and willing to work long hours to get the job done, going from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Undaunted, Sabbath was up to the challenge.

“God, we were so weird,” laughs Ward. “I don’t recall us being savvy enough to put that together. It’s almost like we were told that this is what it is, this is what you have fellas. This is what you do. It was like, okay, well, we’ll just do it then. So we just showed up and did it.”

Having engineer Tom Allom and producer Rodger Bain, real recording professionals, onboard helped Sabbath stay on schedule. Allom, for his part, says on the DVD that he knew exactly how to record Sabbath.
“With what he had, and with what Rodger had, I think that they used the tools very well,” says Ward. “You know, we tried to scramble everything to put it all together the best we could. We had some fairly decent microphones, which was the case back in the late ‘60s, around ’69, early ’70. So, I think with the tools that they had and the equipment that they had, they were able to capture at least part of what we sounded like.”
Time being an issue, Sabbath laid down tracks in three takes or less. “I don’t think we’d ever [gone beyond] that,” admits Ward. “I think if we were in Take 4, we’d probably forget the song, you know, because we knew we were on a timeline, and we intended to keep to that timeline, much to Tom Allom and Rodger Bain’s efforts to keep that tight. We knew that’s what we were being given, to try to take every advantage of that. So in that sense, we encouraged each other. We were very pushy towards each other.”
And Sabbath, being the force of nature they were live and always pushing to play at a volume that was troublesome to manage, had trouble adjusting to the confines of the studio.

“This was like the band’s fifth day in a recording studio, ‘cause we were only a couple days with Black Sabbath and now we were doing Paranoid and it was like a few more days for Paranoid,” says Ward. “We were very inexperienced, but what we were at the time was we were a touring band. We were playing live and we were playing loud and we were playing very aggressively. So, for anybody to capture that in a very small studio, with the baffles and the microphones of the day … I remember just my snare drum, they were trying to just get the microphone to not just go into the red and just overpower the microphone, ‘cause I was just playing full strength. You know, I didn’t know how to play in the studio.”

Being young and somewhat naïve about the recording process, Sabbath decided, whether consciously or unconsciously, to sort of mimic the chords and notes Iommi was churning out, and in doing so, they added incredible heft to the overall sound.

“It was whatever Tony was doing, we’d try to enhance, fill and do that,” says Ward. “That was the priority: getting as big a sound as we possibly could. And so, in doing that, keeping that in mind, then we would look at how to create that bigger sound that we had to make it dramatic or dark or hard or critical – any of those things. So, that would be our focus. Whatever we needed to do, whatever the ingredients were note-wise or rhythmically to get to those places, of the latter that I just mentioned, whatever we would do, we’d go wherever we needed to go to get that and just pour all that out.”

That flood intensified tracks like “War Pigs,” the title track and Ward’s particular favorite, “Hand of Doom.”
“It’s just raw and naked, and Ozzy’s phrasing is superb,” says Ward. “I like the fact that we got some of our little jazz things going on in there (Ward being a big fan of drummer Gene Krupa and Iommi being heavily influenced by Django Reinhardt). And we go from our little jazz things to a wonderful dynamic of sheer volume. When we played that live, we used to blow everybody away, because we were playing very, very soft and then suddenly you can hear the amps just rise up, baarrangg … you know, so to me, that’s pure metal.”

If “Hand of Doom” was “pure metal,” the trippy, acoustically sketched out space travelogue “Planet Caravan” was something altogether different.

“I think it was something that we would go to when we needed a bit of peace, and I strongly suspect it was the same formula, as always, which was that Tony had, you know, some kind of a riff going on or some kind of chord, because that’s how things would normally start,” says Ward. “When I listen to that, it sounds like Ozzy immediately caught on to the guitar and interpreted a melody straightaway, so even after 30 seconds of it, we could turn it into a song. Yeah, it was a nice resting spot.”

There wasn’t much rest for the wicked, though, on Paranoid. The album starts with the raging anti-war epic “War Pigs,” which, perhaps surprisingly, has some basis in Sabbath’s appreciation for the Latin-tinged poly-rhythms of a band called The Shadows, whose influence on Sabbath, according to Ward, is subtle but omnipresent.

“That was one that we had rehearsed before, so it wasn’t something that was brand new that we built in the studio or anything,” says Ward. “And we’d already been playing that out, playing it in front of audiences. I thought it was just such a good song live, very compelling. But yeah, I like the way we did play the grooves, especially the top groove … you can feel the jazz influence, only it’s played extremely f**king loud.”
Another song that was honed to perfection live was “Jack The Stripper/Fairies With Boots.” Ward says, “It’s one of the band’s favorites. It always has been. I think it was fairly well recorded. We’d been playing that for quite some time. And it was a fun song to play. Onstage, we got really, really raucous with it.”

Speaking of raucous, the stinging, frenetically paced title track, a classic song that describes, in horrifying fashion, a struggle to maintain one’s sanity, was something unexpected, a last-minute fill-in that Sabbath put together in under half an hour. It all started with an idea in Iommi’s head. As Ward, Ozzy and Butler went to lunch that last day in the studio, Iommi excused himself. He wanted to work on what’s become one of the greatest riffs in rock history, “ … and we followed about 10 minutes later,” recalls Ward. “He was playing the top 30 or 40 seconds of what was going to be ‘Paranoid,’ and so, we didn’t say a word. It was quite subdued actually. I got up there on my drums, Geezer got on his bass, and Ozzy [got] behind the mic, and we just slammed in and took about 20 minutes to do it. And again, I think that’s one of the good things about being a band sharing everything equally and being intuitive to each other. And that’s what can come out. And I think it was 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, from beginning to end. We recorded it, and then there was an overdub the next day, I think, where Tony played through it, and I played through it.”

Firing on all cylinders, Sabbath, in just two days, had created not only an album for the ages, but they had also drawn up the blueprints for what a genre that become known as heavy metal. Critics, at the time and for years afterward, loathed Sabbath, but they got the last laugh. Paranoid went straight up to #1 in the U.K. and the songs “Paranoid” and “Iron Man” marched into the lower reaches of the U.S. charts.
As for Sabbath, the realization of what they’d accomplished took a while to sink in.

“I guess we must have stopped to enjoy the party and congratulate each other for being No. 1, but I don’t think any of us knew even when we were doing it what that meant,” says Ward. “It must have meant something different for everybody, like ‘Oh, we’re No. 1’ and I was expecting something to happen, like there’d be a bolt of lightning out of the sky or something, you know, and I’ll be invited to see the Queen. The only thing we really thought about was getting a little bit of sleep and making sure we had some food. It’s strange because when it actually happens, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, right. What do we do with this now?”
Sabbath was about to find out.


- Peter Lindblad

DVD Review: Black Sabbath "Paranoid" (Classic Album)

DVD Review: Black Sabbath "Paranoid" (Classic Album)

All Access Review:  B+

A seismic shift occurs in Black Sabbath’s monolithic, sci-fi revenge fantasy “Iron Man” that few, outside of former Black Flag front man and spoken-word terrorist Henry Rollins, would ever notice. Swarmed under by Tony Iommi’s panzer division guitar riffs and Ozzy Osbourne’s freakishly sinister distorted vocals, the absolute brilliance of this little treasure often goes unnoticed, getting lost in a storm of gloomy power chords born of the factories of Sabbath’s home of Birmingham, England. Rollins, however, is amazed by this incredibly agile movement.

In the latest edition of Eagle Vision’s highly acclaimed “Classic Albums” series, a documentary that details the making of Sabbath’s archetypal heavy-metal LP, Paranoid, Rollins describes a slow, tantalizing descent in the bridge that shifts into a steep, sure-footed ascent that, according to Rollins, would “sprain” the brains of amateurs, and many professionals, who try to duplicate it. And he might be right.

Giving these small, but crucial, moments in a given work of genius their just due is part of what makes the “Classic Albums” series such vital companion pieces to transcendent albums like Paranoid and this one, in particular, goes to great lengths to make a case for the artist in question and the underappreciated musicality of Sabbath. Whether it’s sitting down with Iommi to dissect some of his most influential guitar parts or watching engineer Tony Allom replay tapes of Ozzy’s lyrical riffing over “Paranoid” in an attempt to refine the melody, this DVD offers incredible technical insight into how Sabbath constructed its undisputed masterpiece, even going so far as to explore the jazz influences of Iommi and drummer Bill Ward – namely, Django Reinhardt and Gene Krupa, respectively - and how they furtively plant these subtle trip wires to alert people to the fact that there’s something more at work here than just massive volume and power. Sabbath is out to blow your mind with how this fearsome foursome is in absolute control of its dynamics.

And lest you think it is all studio reconstruction and jargon that only a musician would understand, think again. As always, the makers of the “Classic Albums” series take pains to put Paranoid in its historical context and study the events in Sabbath’s life to that point that led up to the album that would provide a blueprint for heavy, and at times mind-bending (see the medicated psychedelia of “Planet Caravan”), rock. All four Sabbath members tell fascinating, and often very funny, stories about this heady time in their lives, and in-depth talks with bassist Geezer Butler and esteemed music writers explore the almost unbearable realism of the album’s lyrics and how Sabbath mirrored the madness of the times, especially Vietnam, as the dream of a hippie utopia died in a cruel, tortured fashion.

Again, “Classic Albums” has done what it set out to do, and in the process, it garners a little more respect for a band that was, at first, eviscerated by critics but in the end, has endured as one of hard rock’s most revered quartets. Maybe it ends a little abruptly, but that’s hardly reason to avoid picking this up.

- Peter Lindblad

Eagle Vision:  Black Sabbath:  "Paranoid" (Classic Album)

Be sure and check back in the coming week to read our interview with Bill Ward