After that, things generally went to shit. Between 1981 and 1995, the band put out eight albums, many of which were relatively forgettable, given how monumental most of the first ten albums had been. During that time, Iommi was the only constant member of the group, as they cycled through nine lead singers, seven drummers, and seven bassists, some of whom never even appeared on an album. That said, 2013's 13 -- with a mostly reunited original lineup, save for Ward -- was pretty good, but that would be eleven, and Tuesday Top Eleven isn't alliterative, so there you go.
Black Sabbath's influence cannot be understated. They invented heavy metal and inspired not only every subsequent band in that genre, but also bands and artists in countless other genres. Over the years, I have appreciated Black Sabbath more and more, and I even more appreciate how each of the members contributed to make their sound. Ozzy's vocals were unlike anything at the time, and they were perfect for this new genre they created -- creepy and steely. Iommi's riffs and guitar sound were different -- borne out of necessity, after he lost the tips of two fingers in an industrial accident in the late '60s and had to change how he played and tuned his guitar. The rhythm section of Butler -- who was also the band's main lyricist -- and Ward is as good as you'll find in hard rock and metal, and I've really noticed the intricacies of their bass and drum work as I've gotten older. The music they made is truly excellent and game-changing.
But don't take my word for it. Listen to the music. If you're a casual fan or maybe you only know a couple songs, my hope is that this post will help you dig a little deeper into their catalog. With that, I give you my favorite song from each of Black Sabbath's first ten albums, along with the highest chart position of each album in the UK and the U.S.
1. Black Sabbath (1970): "The Wizard"
UK albums chart: #8
Billboard albums chart: #23
This Thursday is the 50th anniversary of the release of Black Sabbath's eponymous debut album. It's hard to imagine a time without them, but think about how different this album must have sounded to your average music listener in 1970, coming off of the flower power of the late '60s. The album cover was this creepy woman dressed in black in front of an drab medieval mill in the English countryside on a late fall day. And the music matched. The rain and church bells that open the self-titled opening track foretell a new sound, and then Iommi's thunderous riff -- the so-called devil's triad, a combination of notes long banned because it was thought to summon Satan -- must have terrified many a listener. Then Ozzy's voice comes in with a story of a figure in black pointing at him, legendarily inspired by a true story, when Butler had been reading an occult book before bed -- in his room with all black walls -- and awoke in the middle of the night to see a figure in black at the end of the bed staring at him, only to wake in the morning to find the book had vanished. He repainted the walls after that. It was hard for me not to pick "Black Sabbath," but since that's a little more well-known, I am going with "The Wizard," the second track on the album. It's a more bluesy song, with Ozzy wailing on a harmonica, about a pleasant wizard who strolls through a town. The riff is magnificent, and Ward's drumming always sticks out to me.
2. Paranoid (1970): "War Pigs"
UK albums chart: #1
Billboard albums chart: #12
The band's second album, Paranoid -- released a mere eight months after their debut album -- is a metal classic. There was certainly no sophomore slump. Iconic metal songs like "Iron Man," "War Pigs," and the breakneck title track make the first side of the album one of the greatest in metal history, and they are complemented by the underrated second side, featuring "Electric Funeral," "Hand of Doom," and "Fairies Wear Boots." "War Pigs" is my favorite Black Sabbath song. A nearly eight-minute anti-war song, it starts off slow and plodding, with air raid sirens in the background, and then picks up and kicks into the main riff at about the 50-second mark. I get goosebumps whenever Ozzy sings that first line that grabbed me the first time I ever heard it in my high school football locker room before a game. "Generals gathered in their masses / just like witches at black masses." It's right then when you realize you're not in Kansas anymore. This song has great dark imagery ("in the fields, a body's burning," "now in darkness world stops turning / ashes where the body's burning," "day of judgment, God is calling / on their knees, the war pigs crawling"). Once in high school, I wrote out the lyrics to "War Pigs" and told my mom it was a poem I wrote. Her reaction was, and I quote, "Oh. It's dark. It's good. But it's dark." Then I had to go away for a while. And kudos to whoever made their own video for the song that I am embedding below.
3. Master of Reality (1971): "Children of the Grave"
UK albums chart: #5
Billboard albums chart: #8
With their third album, Master of Reality, the band had their first Top 10 album in the U.S., and they were hitting their stride. This album has an even darker sound, but less fuzz and reverb, and it hits pretty hard with songs like "After Forever," "Children of the Grave," "Lord of This World," and "Into the Void." And don't sleep on the band's ode to weed, "Sweet Leaf," with an intro of Iommi coughing after taking a hit off a joint when the tape happened to be rolling (no pun intended). My favorite track off of Master of Reality is "Children of the Grave." I featured this song in last year's Rocktober, so pardon me if I pretty much just copy and paste what I said then. The song just blows you away from beginning to end. The pace matches the urgency of the lyrics -- another anti-war song, imploring children not to become warmongers and to "show the world that love is still alive." Iommi's riff is blistering, and Ward's drumming again stands out on this one -- it's like there's two of him, one of whom is playing the standard beat and other who is whacking away on the toms. This is the last track on the first side of the album, and just so you know it's Black Sabbath, on the original LP, a whispered "Children of the Grave" is continually looped at the end of the song. Thankfully, on this version below, they put some of that at the end (as well as the "Embryo" intro).
UK albums chart: #8
Billboard albums chart: #13
With their fourth album -- the aptly titled Vol. 4, which was kind of a wink and a nod to Led Zeppelin's untitled fourth album, released the prior year -- was the first album the band produced themselves. It was also when cocaine really started to take over, which certainly seems obvious given that there is a song called "Snowblind" on the album. Regardless, it's still a great album. Highlights for me include "Tomorrow's Dream," "Cornucopia," "St. Vitus' Dance," and "Supernaut" -- the latter of which was on my list of Top Ten "Super" Songs a few weeks ago, and has been creeping its way into second place on my list of favorite Sabbath songs. Ward's high-hat intro is almost disco-esque, but any concerns that Sabbath made a dance song are quickly dashed as Iommi unleashes a crushing riff. This song just kills. Ozzy wails, and Ward is a madman with a massive drum solo that starts at about the 2:37 mark and lasts for nearly 40 seconds before Iommi comes back in with that riff.
5. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973): "A National Acrobat"
UK albums chart: #4
Billboard albums chart: #11
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is the Black Sabbath Studio album I ever bought, and it's widely considered one of their best, although I personally enjoy the first four a little more. But make no mistake, this is a phenomenal metal album. The title track kicks it off with force with a few distinct parts, from the heavy-to-light verses in the first half of the song before a great solo by Iommi, and then it gets a little slower and darker, as Ozzy belts things out on top of a crunch riff of doom. The rest of the album is great too, with the highlights for me being "A National Acrobat," "Sabbra Cadabra," "Looking for Today," and "Spiral Architect." For some reason, this album has always seemed a little tripper and sludgy than the prior four, and that's not necessarily a band thing. I just don't want to ever drop acid while listening to it. "A National Acrobat" is my favorite song on the album. It's got a nice plodding riff that takes on on a hellish journey, as many Sabbath songs tend to do.
UK albums chart: #7
Billboard albums chart: #28
By 1975, the band was in a bitter legal battle with its former manager, and they named their sixth album Sabotage as a "fuck you" to him. But that anger spilled over into the music, in a good way. Sabotage is a visceral album that mixes heavy-hitting metal songs with a few slower songs instrumentals. "Hole in the Sky," "Symptom of the Universe," "Thrill of It All," and the barb-tongued "The Writ" highlight the album for me, with "Symptom of the Universe" coming in as my favorite song on the album. It's a frantic six and a half minutes. On top of another legendary Iommi riff, Ozzy crushes "Symptom of the Universe," and you feel like he might pop an eye or something with the force of his vocals, while Ward and Butler drive the song into hysteria. Some consider it the first thrash metal song of all-time, and I don't disagree with that. It's a metal classic.
UK albums chart: #13
Billboard albums chart: #51
Technical Ecstasy was kind of a step back for the band, as their various drug and alcohol addictions seemed to finally be affecting their work. The band was also feeling pressure from other genres, like punk and AOR, that pulled it in different directions, with mixed results. It was the first Sabbath album that didn't chart in the Top 10 in the UK or the Top 30 in the U.S. And then there was the album cover, which Ozzy described as "two robots screwing on an escalator." Perhaps the most surreal moment of the album is when Ward sings lead vocals on "It's Alright," which sounds more like it belonged on an ELO album, not a Black Sabbath album. That's not to suggest the album is all bad, but it just doesn't hold a candle to the first six albums. A few highlights include "Back Street Kids" and "Gypsy," the latter of which I'm choosing in large part because my grandma used to tell me about how gypsies stole goats and chickens from her family during her childhood in Italy. The song starts off great, but then has some Foreigner-esque piano parts that should confuse you if you've listened to the previous six songs on this list.
8. Never Say Die! (1978): "Never Say Die"
UK albums chart: #12
Billboard albums chart: #69
The last album with the original lineup, Never Say Die! was another by-product of massive amounts of coke, in-fighting, and a band falling apart. They were basically going through the motions at this point, and the album title would turn out to be ironic, given that the original lineup would soon, in fact, be dead. This album also failed to crack the Top 10 on the UK album charts, and it was their worst-charting album in the U.S. up to that point, clocking in at a meager #69. Let's just listen to the title track and move on.
9. Heaven and Hell (1980): "Neon Knights"
UK albums chart: #9
Billboard albums chart: #28
After Ozzy left the band in 1979, they needed to bring in someone who could move the band forward, and who better to do that than former Rainbow lead singer Ronnie James Dio -- the man who brought devil horns to music. The resulting union was short-lived, but it produced some great results. Heaven and Hell rejuvenated and reinvented Black Sabbath, who, as discussed above, had kind of fallen into a rut with their several previous albums. Dio brought both a powerful voice and great songwriting skills. The album is a metal classic. It has the energy that the band's last few albums with Ozzy lacked. Some of the songs (or at least early incarnations of them) were written before Ozzy left the band, but then reworked once Dio joined the band. Whatever they did worked, as Heaven and Hell was the band's highest-charting album in both the US and UK since Sabotage, and it has become the band's third-best selling album behind Paranoid and Master of Reality. During the tour supporting this album, original drummer Bill Ward quit the band due to alcoholism. He would rejoin the band several years later, but after Dio left. Thus, this was the only studio album to feature Dio, Iommi, Ward, and Butler. The title track is magnificent, and "Die Young" is as good as anything the band put out. However, the opening track, "Neon Knights," is, in my opinion, the best Dio-era Black Sabbath song and one of my top five favorite Sabbath songs overall. What better way to announce a new beginning than to kick off your album with a driving metal song with a great riff and soaring vocals. The band proved they could succeed -- and rock -- without Ozzy, at least for a couple albums.
10. Mob Rules (1981): "Turn Up The Night"
UK albums chart: #12
Billboard albums chart: #29
Ward departed the band before this album, and former Rick Derringer drummer Vinny Appice was brought in as Ward's replacement. This was also the last album the band recorded with Dio (until 1992's Dehumanizer), who left the band after some internal conflicts with Iommi and Butler, but of course, went on to form his own band and experience great success throughout the '80s. While I don't think this is as good of an album as Heaven and Hell, it's still pretty damn good, and it certainly continued to bring Sabbath more in tune with the changing times, as they fought to keep up with New Wave of British Heavy Metal (i.e., all the bands they influenced). "Turn Up the Night" is an energetic opening track that could have easily fit on an Iron Maiden or Judas Priest album, or certainly on one of Dio's own band's albums from the early '80s.
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