The Music in my Life

And now for the second Black Sabbath album to deserve a post here. This time it’s the very first Sabbath album, released in 1968 (6 years before I was born, incidentally), simply titled "Black Sabbath".

If you are only aware of later Sabbath — even still with Ozzy Osbourne as vocalist, in the 70s, or in their relatively recent reunion tours –, it’s likely that this album will surprise you — even if you already know half the songs, such as "Black Sabbath" or "N.I.B.". And why is that? It’s partly because of they way they’re played here, as opposed to how the same band plays them decades later — here they were raw, full of energy and creativity. Here, they were not famous — it was their first album ever, after all –, so they didn’t have fans not to disappoint. Here, they were not an "institution", they didn’t have an established genre. They were not even "heavy metal", since the genre didn’t exist at the time (indeed, to many, including myself, this is the very first metal album ever). They could do whatever they wanted, write the music they felt like playing.

Think you know Sabbath? Then listen to songs from this album such as "Behind the Wall of Sleep", "The Wizard", and, especially, "Warning" (a cover, but whose original version is long forgotten). The latter deserves special attention — mostly instrumental, at times more blues than metal or rock, lasting more than 10 minutes, it includes some of the best jamming by Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward, and best solos by Iommi, ever recorded, in their more than 30-year career. And that was on their first album. It’s a song that you never get tired of listening to, which you can easily show to a non-metal fan and, unless they’re completely obtuse and believe all music should be simple, radio-friendly, and existing just for dancing to in nightclubs.

This is where metal began — though they didn’t know it at the time.

Oh, and one curiosity: Ozzy’s voice sounds (to my tastes) much better here than on any of his later albums (both with Sabbath and solo). His voice here is intense, powerful and emotional, without any trace of the "whininess" found (sorry, people) in his later works. Did his voice change for the worse after 1968? Did he choose to sing more nasally and at a higher pitch after this album? Questions, questions…