Black Sabbath Album Reviews - Cilantro Milkshake

Black Sabbath is a band I always thought I was supposed to appreciate, but never really did. That is, until I went through their discography album by album. I had absolutely NO IDEA what musical range they had.

I thought I’d be slogging for hours through lesser versions of “Paranoid” and “Iron Man,” but I was DEAD WRONG. While they’re credited with inventing heavy metal, I found that they’re all over the hard rock spectrum, often 100 times more upbeat than their dark album covers would lead you to believe. This band is downright FUN.

Most people seem to regard their first four albums as their apex, where you’ll find their most well-known songs. But, if forced to sub-categorize, I’d more strongly recommend the next four, which I find more musically dynamic, catchy, and out of control. If that opinion is just wrong, then feel free to strike me down with the hammer of Satan for being a prissy bitch.

As the 70s turned into the 80s, Ozzy Osborne was kicked out of the band, and guitarist Tony Iommi spent the next decade operating a revolving door of members while Ozzy carried out his solo career. I won’t bother reviewing past the first non-Ozzy album because I simply don’t have a taste for it, but make no mistake, with an impressive eight albums in nine years, there’s plenty of meat on the bone to gnaw on.

Something that stands out about Black Sabbath is how damn influential they are. They’re possibly THE most influential rock band ever. The Beatles were influential, but few artists could write such infectious pop tunes. Led Zeppelin was influential, but not many bands could match their technical prowess. With Sabbath, you get some beloved forms of metal and hard rock that are straightforward enough that other people could emulate them.

Sabbath drew the blueprint for thrash metal that blew up in the 80s and spawned a stoner rock genre that exists to this day. And you go through these albums and realize how far their reach goes. Arena rock, hair metal, prog, grunge, funk rock, power punk, psychedelic, 90s alternative, 2000s nu-metal … you can hear distinct Sabbath elements in ALL of it.

Believe the hype, motherfucker. Black Sabbath RULES!

Black Sabbath

1970
6 smiling Satans out of 10

Sure, the title track’s first few minutes are iconically spooky, and “N.I.B.” indeed kicks a few asses with a pounding rhythm. The rest is a harmless “rockin’ good time,” driven by happy little guitar licks, a lot closer to that “hippie music” that they were trying so hard not to emulate.

There’s even a harmonica on one song. A HARMONICA!!! And it’s not even played through any effects that make it sound like something scarier!!! There’s a weak guitar solo toward the end, which sounds like a dude casually noodling around. I can hear that at Guitar Center! And right after that, the rhythm section comes in and they’re disjointed as hell. What’s going on? Are they warming up? Sorry, folks, but other than one-and-a-half songs, I find this album unmemorable and hard not to tune out.

Paranoid

1970
7 laughing Satans out of 10

This is more like it. Right off the bat, there’s a beefier tone here, guitar with warmth and bass with balls. The drums still sound weak though. Is the whole library going to be like this, or did someone eventually say, “Aren’t we huge rock stars? Can we get a better drumkit?”

There’s a lot on this album that seems to have influenced the hard rock, grunge, metal, and stoner rock that came in the 40 years after it. And while the opener “War Pigs” is a great song, especially the last couple minutes of diddly metal, nobody EVER copied the goofy hi-hat beat in its verses. In case you don’t know it, it goes like this: “tis tis tis tis tis tis tis tis tis tis tis tis tis-shah-tis tis tis BLAM BLAM!” At the least, it gives Ozzy’s vocals open space to sing his silly lyrics, and that’s probably what this album does best: paint a textured background that lets Ozzy take center stage.

“Paranoid” is straightforward, speedy, chug-a-chug goodness. “Planet Caravan” is unlike anything else, quiet and calm and eerie, with Ozzy sounding like a deep sea whale communicating with another whale 1,000 miles away. “Iron Man” is goofy and simple and heavy enough that Beavis and Butthead liked to sing it. “Electric Funeral” is also sort of goofy and heavy. “Hand of Doom” is slow sludge rock, and I’d call it dumb if the Melvins and 100 other bands didn’t imitate its style. “Rat Salad” is mostly an unimpressive drum solo and it’s so sloppy it might just be random jamming that was recorded by accident. “Fairies Wear Boots” speeds up that sludgy sound and it’s the dark horse best thing on the album: snappy, blaring, chaotic … leading to … a fade out? They faded out on the end of an album? What were these guys smoking?

Do I like this album? Not really, but I’ll admit it has a lot going for it — hits, heaviness, variance, slick guitar licks, a bass player that’s awake, and Ozzy showing some range — uneven as it sounds and cheesy as its lyrics might be.

Master of Reality

1971
6 evil possessors out of 10

I’m not doing much research, but I think this is what happened: Some bold sound engineer said to this band, “You guys THINK you sound like this: Dnng, dnng, dung-dun-dun, Drrr-Dnng! … but you ACTUALLY sound like this: Mweerr, mweer, psh-psh, keh-keh, mwerr mwerr” and the improved sound quality on Masters of Reality is the result. Fuzzy guitar, juicy bass, and a drumkit that sounds like it was tuned by an adult! It’s not the fattest sound ever, but whatever, it’s 1971. I’ll take it.

“Sweet Leaf” is a stone-cold stoner rock classic, and “Lord of this World” is the same flavor but even better, marching through a chunk-a-chunk riff and paying it off with some stellar guitar leads toward the end.

The rest? Eh… There’s a song that’s surprisingly upbeat and happy. There’s one with awful additional drums that seems like it’s supposed to really thrash the Satan into you but comes up way short. There are three subdued acoustic-ish tracks that are quite boring. And there are distinct, eerily familiar riffs driving the slow metal on the closer “Into the Void,” and I swear, every heavy band ever has written something along the same lines. There’s even a “Bam-Bam ~~String-Bend~~ Bam-Bam!” that everyone’s done at some point, but since Black Sabbath did it first, they’re legends.

An inconsistent album, but definitely influential.

Vol. 4

1972
9 golden rainbow’s ends out of 10

What the hell do these guys think they’re doing at the start of this album? Having fun? Auditioning for Woodstock? What happened to scaring all those hippies?

Oh, just kidding. The minor chords and tortured screams and hard-hitting instrumentation comes soon enough on this album. In fact, it’s a stronger, heavier, more synched up effort this time around overall. Dare I say, it actually … kicks ass? Good job, Black Sabbath, now you’re cooking!

The band has more cohesion here and they sculpt certain parts well, instead of it just feeling like guitar licks played over a thoughtless beat. The vocals take a big step up, more smartly woven in, Ozzy sounding more like his iconic self.

“Supernaut” is powerful, dark but speedy, with a big wooshing guitar and well-timed stops and starts. “Tomorrow’s Dream” and “Snowblind” sound big and full and sort of poppy despite a lot of twists and turns. And the instrumental “Laguna Sunrise” is easily my favorite of Sabbath’s non-rocking stuff, a truly beautiful blending of acoustic guitar and a string section. “Changes” is on here too, with piano backing up Ozzy’s painfully unironic love ballad. There’s a bit of everything, sludge rock, riff rock, rock rock, vocals that bellow and sooth and scream. This album holds my attention and surprises me way better than the previous albums.

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

1973
7 heads all full of lies out of 10

Who let Steppenwolf in the studio? Is this biker rock I hear? Oh, I’m just joking. But seriously, who let The Who in the building? What’s with this exuberant “celebration of life” music? Oh, I’m just pulling your leg. But seriously, who let Boston on the property? Is that a flute? I kid, but I mean, SERIOUSLY, who let Electric Light Orchestra in the district with their alien synthesizer?

I guess the guys figured they’d already spawned a stoner rock genre that would carry well into the next century, so it was time to smile, crank up the treble, buy a synthesizer and make a song with it the first day they had it, find some room for a piano and a flute and a tambourine and a shaker, and haul ass down the open road with the wind in their faces while throwing confetti in the air.

This is fun-filled rock ’n’ roll, full of straightforward riffs and pleasant-but-unexpected turns into easy-going, bright passages of cheery melody. Well, at least the title track is pretty hard-hitting, and yeah, there’s the one sludgy song, and there’s the obligatory acoustic song, which is pretty unmemorable. So I guess I’m just referring to the five other songs, but they’re so unexpectedly happy that they stand out. And Ozzy seemed to gain some confidence in that newfound signature style from the last album, bellowing over the band with caffeinated gusto.

I can’t say any of it is poorly written, and in fact, I can see the argument that this is their most mature record yet. But, I don’t know, if I want to listen to Boston, I’ll listen to Boston, whose first album came out in 1976, so it hadn’t existed yet, but fuck, who cares? I do very much enjoy Sabbath’s brighter side, but it doesn’t come together just right on this album.

Sabotage

1975
9 stolen tombs out of 10

Who knew Black Sabbath had a sense of humor? Case in point: The third song on this album, “Symptom of the Universe,” is an iconic assault of thrashing riffage, sounding just like early Metallica and Megadeth, and then at 4:30, it suddenly transforms into … JACK JOHNSON! (He’s that sappy “singer-songwriter” guy you heard coming through the speakers at every mall in America around 2003.) Well, it’s like the instrumentation of Jack Johnson, with faux classical guitar over Hawaiian vacation beats, but with Ozzy doing a Robert Plant impression. And it’s actually good! It’s just really surprising, seemingly interrupting an iconic metal song.

Oh, and the rest of the album is awesome too. Some of it is dark-ish metal, some is more of that joyful hard rock we got on the last album, but it works better overall. I mean, these guys can actually write songs! They aren’t just two-chord stoners! And the production is a lot better too, with help from a rhythm guitar. When Tony Iommi goes wailing away, the rest of the band doesn’t suddenly seem naked without him covering them up.

I love the simple big-as-hell riffing in “Hole in the Sky.” I like the ambitious prog-rock structuring that takes “The Writ” in a bunch of different directions. There’s a synthy part in “The Thrill of It All” that’s smartly packed under the wall of other sounds happening. There’s a churchy choir weaving back and forth with mean guitar on “Supertzar” and it’s not even that cheesy! How did they pull that off?

The more I listen to this album the more I’m impressed with it. It rocks! The last song fades out, which I despise, but whatever. I’m learning that Sabbath must have been eager to release stuff as fast as possible so they could start writing new stuff, because they apparently enjoyed making music!

Technical Ecstasy

1976
5 endless hours of heartache out of 10

Now I’m really stumping myself. I liked where this band was going with the last few albums, and this one feels like a natural step forward, so why don’t I like it?

Too much Ozzy voice over the top of everything? Too much guitar solo? Synths taking up too much space? Production that’s too clean? Yes, yes, yes, and yes, but I think it’s mainly the songwriting. These songs just don’t speak to me or pull me into their little worlds enough. They’re strong but predictable.

You know how Black Sabbath influenced every loud rocking band that came after them, including a bunch of GREAT bands? Well, they’ve also influenced a ton of shitty bands. And here, they seem like a band that’s influenced by themselves, but missing some genuine thing that makes it original.

Never Say Die!

1978
10 blood red skies out of 10

Wow, from that … to THIS, this rip-your-face-off, go-everywhere, loud-as-fuck stream of awesomeness! In their last hurrah with Ozzy on the mic, these guys deliver the goods in the form of bright, roaring, feel-good hard rock, incorporating wailing guitar solos, ever-shifting rhythms, bits of prog and jazz (yes, I said jazz!), well-placed piano and synth and harmonica and horns(!), and Ozzy screaming his head off but somehow fitting into place anyway, including a few utterly perfect vocal melodies. The drumming is wild, a far cry from the steady beats of Sabbath’s yesteryear, and the songs jolt from part to part in explosive flashes. Did I say those complementary instruments were “well-placed”? That’s understating it, they’re actually expertly performed, they kick ass, and they add lots of color. Some tunes are fist-pumping anthems. Others are less fist but still pumping. I really like how the occasional wicked-sounding riff fits into this brighter context. I’m not even going to mention specific tracks because this is the one and only Sabbath album that I can just pop in and not judge which songs are good or bad. It’s all good, goddamnit! There’s somebody else singing the closing song (did they fire Ozzy DURING this album?), and it fades out (Ugh!), and I’m still not holding back the 10. Hail Satan!

Heaven and Hell

1980
2 jackals of the street out of 10

Out went Ozzy, and the band’s soul went with him in return for hair metal, compressed production, and Rodney James Dio. When I said earlier that Sabbath influenced hair metal bands, I didn’t mean to imply I actually like this distinctly 80s sub-genre. I pretty much hate it.

The sound is blandly large and coated in electronic glaze. The snare drum is no longer a “crack” as much as it is a “thunk.” The songs sort of march forward, there isn’t as much discernible texture, and Dio’s vocals are PAINFUL.

I’m done with Sabbath from here on out.

Published October 2021