Album Anniversaries: 50 Years of the Genre Pioneering 'Black Sabbath'
Metal music and aesthetics have long been a one of many cultural cornerstones in entertainment, spreading beyond borders and languages. 50 years later, it’s time we look back and celebrate the album that started it all, Black Sabbath.
In Album Anniversaries, writers honor their favorite aging albums and their subsequent legacies, revealing which projects have stood the test of time.
Written by Adithya Srinivas
Photo courtesy of Loudwire
It’s very rare that one band invents a genre of music. Usually, a new type of music emerges through an underground movement of hundreds of artists sharing inventive sounds and learning from each other, as in the cases of jazz, hip-hop and — more recently — lo-fi bedroom pop. But in February of 1970, Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward did just that – paving the way for not only their own immortal discography, but also for legendary acts like Metallica, Slayer, and Megadeth to emerge. 50 years ago, with their debut self-titled album, Black Sabbath invented heavy metal, and nothing gets more badass than that.
The most striking part about Black Sabbath’s story is how completely inconsequential and run-of-the-mill it could have been. Firstly, the project was supposed to be a blues album, as Black Sabbath had built what small following they had at the time as a live touring blues group. In fact, the quartet originally went by the name The Polka Tulk Blues Band, which doesn’t exactly scream heavy metal. The blues lineage does show through in the tracklist though, be it through the playful cowbell and Osbourne’s animated harmonica melody on “The Wizard,” or some of Iommi’s whimsical and groovy lead guitar riffs peppered throughout the tracklist. Clear as the blues influences might have been, Black Sabbath was still something different. It featured a thicker and heavier sound than anything before, but even this wasn’t entirely on purpose.
When lead guitarist Tony Iommi was 17, working on a factory floor, a machining accident caused him to lose the tips of two fingers on his right hand — his fret hand. To continue playing guitar, he put together homemade plastic prosthetics for his fingers, but then another problem emerged. Iommi couldn’t generate enough power in those fake fingertips to effectively execute the hammer-ons, bends and pull-offs he used so often. Again, Iommi got creative, and heavily detuned his guitar so that the strings were loose enough for his hand to manipulate, a change that would be one of the most consequential in rock history. Together with heavy reverb and distortion, his accidental new set up created Iommi’s now iconic riffs and solos from “Black Sabbath,” “Warning,” and “Wicked World.” This fat, aggressive, and enveloping guitar aesthetic set Black Sabbath’s sound apart from its blues roots, and came to be the sound that defined heavy metal.
But heavy metal is not just an auditory aesthetic. There’s a visual and lyrical component that were just as important in creating the culture, and Black Sabbath was the trailblazer here as well. The album art features a heavily saturated image of a run-down mill in the midst of a forest, directly focused on a mysterious witch-like figure, clad in an all black cloak. The inside of the vinyl gatefold features an inverted cross and a poem that many interpreted to have Satanic meanings. Ozzy Osbourne’s lyrics were also far more provocative than anything else at the time, leading to many accusations that the band had ties to the occult. For example, the lyrics of “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” reference an H.P Lovecraft story by the same name. “N.I.B,” tells a story from the perspective of Lucifer as he falls in love with a woman, with Osbourne ending the choruses wailing “My name is Lucifer, please take my hand”. With their music, visual identity, and lyrical darkness, Black Sabbath had coined a new brand of rebellion that the rock world was happy to latch onto, moving the genre in an inventive and new direction.
Stepping outside of its vast influence, Black Sabbath holds its own as a musical project. Even though the general consensus is that Black Sabbath improved on and expanded their ideas with their next effort, Paranoid, the debut self-titled album still offers up its own set of classic moments.
The intro, “Black Sabbath,” leads in with ominous church bells, rain, and thunder, followed by marching snares and Iommi’s sinister riff. It then gives way to Ozzy Osbourne’s iconic, smoky yet smooth wails that could easily be mistaken for the voice of a man three times his age. The second leg of the track heightens the tension as the drums and bass take a more prominent role in the mix, before Iommi again steals the show with a famous solo as the song climaxes.
The previously mentioned “The Wizard” follows, and lulls the listener with its very blues intro and choruses, but the verses change the mood entirely with aggressive, staccato, minor chord. The marathons of the quadruple track “Wasp / Behind the Wall of Sleep / Bassically / N.I.B” and closing triple track “A Bit of Finger / Sleeping Village / Warning” offer some of the most varied, experimental, and iconic classic rock/blues/metal infusions ever released, and add exclamation to the record, an announcement of the then young band’s presence to everyone.
From top to bottom, Black Sabbath has as much legendary material and industry influence as any one album in history ever had, inspiring cuts from some late Led Zeppelin works, to heavy metal grails like Metallica’s self-titled, and even through modern day metal like Black Midi’s Schlagenheim. Born from necessity and sheer innovation, Black Sabbath’s debut still hits with the same darkness, defiance, and wonder that it had on listeners 50 years ago.