Mob Rules-Black Sabbath

 I'm too tired today to to do unsigned metal, I stayed up all last night, if I feel better later then maybe I'll do some. Anyway right now I am covering Black Sabbath, and not just any Black Sabbath, Dio's Black Sabbath, so it is completely awesome and powerful and cool and yay! This is just a classic heavy metal album and a classic Dio album, this is the album that proved that Dio would be a fixture in heavy metal forever. The guitar is powerful and bold. However Iommi experiments with faster and stronger riffs on this album as opposed to his crunchier and slower riffs off earlier albums. The bass is good as always, Geezer Butler remains rocks solid, even with a new drummer in Vinny Appice. Appice does a good job at the kit with some nice fills. Then of course Dio has the best voice of the 80's so theres no challenging that.

Iommi continually proves himself as one of the greatest guitarists of the age on this album. Every song that he writes has an amazing riff powering it, I think that following this method could result in the release of a lot more awesome music. Iommi loses the slower feel of some of his earlier works in favor for a louder and more distorted sound. He also has solos that still have a bit of a blues feel, but they are now much more heavy metal in style. The bass of Geezer Butler is powerful and helps drive the music along, it has a powerful feel and creates a great sound. The drums are significantly harder than those of Ward and are very well done.

Then of course there are the vocals, wow the vocals. Dio has an amazing voice for such a small man and he can really belt out music like no other. He can sing softly, like he does on the track Sign of the Southern Cross and at other times he can just wail it out and create a humongous epic and beautiful song. His voice has a power only rivaled by Robert Plant and Bruce Dickinson, most other singers can not match his raw power. Ozzy for example has a great voice, possibly better than Dio's but Dio's is just way more powerful and can give a lot more strength to the songs. The lyrics are pure Black Sabbath they are dark and scary and awesome as it always is with Sabbath.

All in all this is an amazing album with a really great sound. Everything that you need for a great album can be found here. There are fantastic guitar parts, guitar parts that are riffs driven and esxtremely powerful. The bass is also strong and helps the music along often Butler Combines with the drums to create and amazing rhythm section. The drums are harder and totally spectacular. Dio has a voice which can tear down a house, it is simply so powerful. The lyrics are dark and awesome and overall this is just a fantastic Black Sabbath album. My favorite track is Sign of the Southern Cross. Really you should listen to this. Now off to fix my pedal.

OVERALL 9/10

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath-Black Sabbath

 This evening I am covering some of my favorite Black Sabbath, I will be covering their 5^th album, also the last one that Ozzy liked. There are some real classic Sabbath songs on this album. Most importantly there is Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, but there are several other awesome tracks like A National Acrobat and Sabbra Cadabra, the B-side is good but not legendary like the A-side songs. The guitar riffs make Iommi the true 'riff master' as Ozzy says. Every Sabbath song has an awesome riff driving it along, it is loud and crunchy and gives a great feel to the music. The bass from Geezer is cool as usual providing a nice feel. The drums are also good, but remarkably light. The vocals of Ozzy are unique as usual and he has awesome lyrics.

The guitar on this album is really sweet. It has classic Iommi style riffs, slow and filled with meat. His riffs are just so juicy, you want to dig your teeth into them and enjoy their glorious taste. They are just so satisfying, after listening to the album you feel that you have enjoyed a wonderful musical meal. Then there is the awesome solos, Iommi proves that you can have blues solos in metal songs with this album. He also proves that you can have weird repetitive bits of classical music on an album as well. (See Fluff). Fluff kills the atmosphere in the album especially considering the great stuff that it is surrounded by. The bass is awesome as usual with a lot of goods fills, but nothing to the quality of NIB. The drums are surprisingly light for the band that started heavy metal.

The vocals are pure Ozzy. These were the days before Ozzy became an old smelly fart, when he was still a strong and powerful young drug addict. His voice comes across as very powerful on this album. It shows all of his youthful energy and power. In essence this is Ozzy's voice at it's finest, at the time of a young man at his peak before drugs completely tore him apart and he had to work to rebuild his life. The lyrics are primarily focused around demonic themes. In particular Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is very dark. There are also some love songs on this album most notably Sabra Cadabra, yet even that comes off as sounding rather dark.

Overall this is an awesome album that is just pure Black Sabbath, and possibly there musical peak. There is awesome guitar on this album, not just through the classic Iommi ostenatos (fancy word for riffs) but also his bluesy solos and the cool effects that he starts to use on this album. Then there are the awesome bass riffs which strengthen the music and add a nice feel. In fact there is an instrumental track and another one with an extended solo for the musicians to show off on. Ozzy's voice is awesome as usual, he is truly in his prime on this album. Then of course the lyrics are the classic awesome Sabbath. My fav song off this album is Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. The album is good enough to have high replay value as well.

OVERALL 9/10

Master of Reality-Black Sabbath

 So now I'm going back to some heavy metal roots. I'm covering the third Black Sabbath album Master of Reality, the first song is titled Sweet Leaf so I think you get a hint as to what its mostly about. There are a couple of Black Sabbath classic on this album like the previously mentioned Sweet Leaf as well as Children of the Grave and Into the Void. There is classic Iommi guitar on this album featuring some insane solos. There are decent bass parts and good drum parts. The lyrics are often drug influenced and Ozzy's voice continues to be ominous powerful, and just overall the voice of heavy metal. The instrumental parts on this album are powerful and loud and don't need solos at times (like Sweat Leaf).

I can't see how somebody could not like the music on this album. There are some really powerful Iommi riffs such as in After Forever. Its hard to remember that before Iommi nobody played this loud or with this much distortion. As I mentioned earlier the riffs just dominate the music and actually eliminate the need for solos at times. When Iommi does solo you are simply blown away. While he may not be as high powered in his solos as his greatest contemporary Page he is still very strong and skilled playing some pretty insane stuff. A lot of his solos do still retain some blues feel though and if you're not into that you might not like them. Geezer Butler has a couple really cool bass lines, especially in After Forever. The drums of Bill ward are good but they are not as explosive or all powerful as the drum's of John Bonham one of his heaviest contemporaries. The guitar is so overpowering though that they can easily be called the heaviest band of the decade.

The lyrics are either dark or drug influenced. Some lyrics are sort of Satanic, for example in Children of the Grave with its dark and disturbing Ooooo part. After Forever is also a pretty dark song from a lyrical standpoint. Then there are tracks like Sweat Leaf, which are basically all about drugs. What I am trying to say is that the lyrics are classic Sabbath and that you can not question them. They are dirty dark and daring you to stand up to them. Ozzy of course can really belt it out and his voice really explodes in some of the songs, he can be seen as the voice of 70s metal if you discount Zeppelin. He is the dark and powerful set of vocal cords that make this album click.

I really like this album. This shows the classic Sabbath line up at their peak and they rock hard. These 4 guys made up the dark rebellion to the light and happy hippie movement that bands like Zeppelin supported. The songs are driven by a riffing guitar that then breaks into some incredible blues metal type solos. The other instruments are given their chances as well to shine and show off. Then the lyrics are dark and ominous, foreboding for the future. Ozzy can belt it like none other and the music simply blows you away. I would recommend this album to anybody, especially people into 70s and 80s metal.

OVERALL 9.5/10

Masters of Reality

Black Sabbath- Paranoid

Yeah! This is a fantastic album. The birth of heavy metal is clear here. War Pigs is an extremely hard and awesome intro to one of the best rock albums of all time. This album is among the first examples of dark war-based riffs. There is a political commentary hear too. If this album got in a fight with almost any other album the other album would go home crying to the extremely hard riffs and power of this bad boy. This is just an explosion of metal here. A lot harder than their debut “Black Sabbath” it also features some flashier guitar work. This is an example of metal's coming out into the 70's. I'm sure people hearing this album for the first time were like WOW my ears are bleeding and this is amazing! On a more personal note Iron Man (on this album) is the second song I learned to play on guitar and the first I could play upside down behind my head. (Yeah I can do that). This is among the best albums ever.

There are some iconic Sabbath songs on this album, in particular Paranoid, Iron Man and War Pigs. (Ironic that Iron Man is nt the title of this album as that goes on to be the more popular song.) The music is hard and powerful. Ozzy's voice (which is the first thing I think of when I think of metal vocals) dominates the music while Iommi proves himself as a guitar god. The album is so hard you can feel it and it just fills you with an inexplicable urge to turn the amp up to 11 :) and have the sound destroy your house (or apartment building in my case).

There is nice juxtaposition though, this is especially seen between the songs Paranoid and the immediately following and much softer track Planet Caravan. Which in my opinion is a pretty weak piece without Paranoid behind it to make it juxtapose in a nice way. Planet Caravan is also the only place on the album that you can hear any of the blues influence of Sabbath (Polka Fulk, teehee). No doubt the best track is the legendary Iron Man, the only good song most little kids know. I play it loud to tick off those pop listening neighbors. I love that song it just fills me with all the emotions metal is supposed to make you feel. It is headbanging angry and generally the 2^nd best song ever (number 1 is Stairway).

Overall this is a monster album. Possibly Sabbath's best featuring most of their best songs (misses Crazy Train). This album just dominates the entire metal scene. All you Death Metalheads would have nothing but for these guys and Iommi's missing fingers (actually this is what my grandfather thinks is extreme metal, and it was in his day :)). This is so hard and amazing you can't help but love it. There are great musical effects and power all over the place. The lyrics rock, actually everything about this album rocks. In short I and every other sane person on earth loves tis album.

OVERALL 10/10

Paranoid

Black Sabbath

BLACK SABBATH-BLACK SABBATH

Right so this is the second in my series of blogs about Early Metal. This time we are coveing a band that is possibly the metallest band ever. These guys are much more metal than Zep and deserve basically as much respect perhaps a little less because they have less of the overall beauty. But still this is a rocking band who as one album title says sold their souls for rock and roll. This album is surprisingly metal for 1970 and the fact that 3 years earlier they were called, get this... POLKA FULK! Isn't that hilarious? Just check their Wikipedia page. This album is very heavy for it's era but it definitely shows some Zep and bluesy references particularly in the track Behind The Wall of Sleep.

The instrumentalism is pretty much spectacular especially seeing as this is the first real metal and that its the first time power chords were used in this way. It has really powerful drum and bass lines which really contribute to the whole feel of the album. Sabbath had definitely not left their blues roots in this album. The previously mentioned Behind the Wall of Sleep is one example, but another key one is NIB. Which is a great song and an early example of their occult lyrics. The solos are also really strong showing Iommis technical skill. They are made more impressive with the knowledge of Iommi missing fingers.

The lyrics are as a whole very good. I'm slightly biased because I love Ozzy. Really though I think that most people can appreciate Ozzy's voice in this album. His lyrics are horror influenced and dark but I think they are very fitting to the band and their name. The Wizard is a personal favorite for the kazoo intro as well as the fact that it's about GANDALF! (Sabbath was a big fan of Lord of the Rings.) This album is hard rock/metal driven and shows it's power. The bass is especially nice in Evil Woman where it just comes through and permeates the song in a really good and powerful. It is well complemented by the guitar part.

Overall this is a really nice album and it comes off nicely and is a good way to spend 45 minutes or so. It is just really great because you can always remember that this surprisingly metal album is the first real metal album ever and comes from a band one name POKA FULK!

OVERALL 8.5/10