BLACK SABBATH: Black Sabbath/Masters of Reality/Paranoid/Vol 4/Sabbath Bloody Sabbath Sanctaury
Stoner rock - it's all the rage these days, and you can see it in the eyes of fans of Queens of the Stone Age, Kyuss and our many metal friends in Finland. All of these bands owe a mighty debt to the four Brummies that formed Black Sabbath in the late-'60s and, through a mixture of drugs, happenstance and mental instability, formulated the nascent version of stoner rock: lugubrious, heavy-handed and very melodic layered sonic slabs that flirted with black magic, sci-fi, philosophy and a peculiar type of English pastoralism that may have had something to do with J.R.R. Tolkien's Birmingham background.
Whatever the reason behind such a monolithic sound, it was clear that Tony Iommi, Bill Ward, Terry "Geezer" Butler and Ozzy Osbourne had tapped into something unique. So the re-issue of Black Sabbath's incredibly superior 1970s rock albums is all the more edifying when you realise that no one - not even their closest musical facsimiles - sounds like them. Far more tune-oriented than people would have you believe, the music on these albums may have titles tailor-made for Parental Advisory stickers (Hand of Doom, Sweet Leaf, Snowblind, Killing Yourself to Live, Paranoid, Into the Void). But they're all, to a song, so good that it's a wonder reappraisal has arrived so late (and then always with a hint of sniffy disdain).
Complementing the Brummie sturm und drang - hilariously so, and for all the right reasons - are tender, often dainty instrumentals with titles such as Orchid, Laguna Sunrise and Fluff (so named after BBC DJ Alan Freeman, who championed the band from their early days). Underneath Sabbath's thoroughly shallow display of Satanic imagery ("the closest I ever got to Black Magic," said Ozzy famously, years back, "was opening a box of chocolates"), it seems, beats the collective heart of mammy's boys. Stone solid rock, then. Yet take one look at The Osbournes and pause to reflect on how horribly wrong life can go. - Tony Clayton-Lea
