Black Sabbath - The black masses of metal's pioneers

Being a rockstar is a fucking gift from God

(Ozzy Osbourne)

Black Sabbath were one of the most influential bands of all time, in a way that is as obvious as it is paradoxically unwitting, making them a truly unique case in the history of rock. We owe to them at least two traits that would become fundamental to the evolution of the very idea of youth music. First and foremost, the main credit - which earns them a rightful place among the "superior" bands - is having been pioneers of a new kind of sound, powerful and slow, massive and monolithic, one that, although already sketched out by some heavy-psych or garage bands (the harder tracks by Blue Cheer, MC5 or the Stooges), underwent an undeniable evolution thanks to guitarist Tony Iommi.

There's still debate over whether Black Sabbath were, to all intents and purposes, the first true heavy metal band, or whether they were instead the most influential hard-rock act of their generation, at a time when other legendary names were also emerging, such as Deep Purple, Thin Lizzy, Blue Oyster Cult and others, each with its own approach. These are distinctions we can only draw in hindsight and relatively speaking, because during the Seventies the above-mentioned terms were often used interchangeably - nor were the musicians and listeners living through those moments particularly interested in making fine distinctions. Still, it's undeniable that the band became the main reference point for much of the heavy metal world, or at the very least Black Sabbath inspired and contributed to the definitive evolution from "hard" to "heavy", whereas other acts such as Judas Priest would shortly afterwards take care of the "metal" side of things and the definitive break from blues roots (still tangible on Sabbath's early records).

Indeed, Black Sabbath's peculiarly obsessive, cavernous sound is found relatively little in later, more widely known groups such as the celebrated Iron Maiden, dynamic and virtuosic, who drew more from them in terms of rhythm guitar and making everything heavier, but not in lead guitar, technical flourishes, the interplay between two guitarists, or atmosphere; instead, that same style proved essential to the birth of various other categories that rose to prominence in later years.

In particular, the band laid down the coordinates on which doom metal was forged (with bands like Candlemass, Saint Vitus, Pentagram or Cathedral, who during the Eighties and Nineties drew heavily on Black Sabbath's typically slow, dogged, hypnotic sound, taking the riffs to extremes and expanding the atmospheres to create a new genre with an identity all its own) and even stoner rock and stoner metal (Kyuss, Monster Magnet, Fu Manchu, Masters of Reality all owe something to Ozzy and co. as well), not to mention bands straddling doom and stoner (Electric Wizard, Sleep).

These are only the most direct examples, because the Sabbath-like influence can be found in many other bands and areas too, rearranged, reinterpreted, evolved in a thousand different ways, each with its own nuances. And as a testament to the reverence felt for the band, we'll also see how many Black Sabbath songs and albums lent their titles to the names of numerous bands in these fields.

But it's not only the most recent epigones who pay tribute and homage to the importance of Black Sabbath. While in the punk world the Ramones and the Sex Pistols had bands like the Stooges as their godfathers, the main protagonists and pioneers of metal had Black Sabbath as their reference point; so much so that even Rob Halford, singer of the aforementioned historic Judas Priest - themselves undoubtedly true "fathers" of heavy metal - when questioned about that very status, reiterated that for him the real "fathers" who came before everyone else must be considered Black Sabbath.

Curiously, though, the band hated the label. Guitarist Iommi, in interviews, has said that whenever someone called them "heavy metal", they would promptly correct them, insisting they were "heavy rock" - but in the end they gave in.

On top of all this, the Englishmen also defined an aesthetic and an attitude that were utterly opposite to what the generation of their peers in the so-called Summer of Love had been practicing for years (in this case too, an evolution of the garage bands already mentioned). And this would be far from secondary in shaping the character of their sound and attitude. But let's trace the stages of the band's career to get to know them better.

The philosophy and origins of Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath's worldview is dark and pessimistic: nothing redemptive can exist in a world that is essentially to be despised; the only remedy in the search for one's own salvation is escape into the success and enjoyment that rock'n'roll can offer. The choice of the horror imagery of witches' sabbaths and witchcraft, an initial esoteric and/or satanic approach, stemmed mainly from the desire to set themselves apart from contemporary bands and to scandalize a moralistic society, but it also proved perfect for standing out from the crowd of bands and getting noticed. Black Sabbath forcefully brought the fascination with death into rock (in a far less intellectual way than the Velvet Underground had done), pushing to the extreme a nihilistic, individualist mindset that would become one of the pillars of the underground metal movement that would emerge years later. Black Sabbath's music is the response of four English working-class men to their American hippie cousins, rejecting and railing against their nihilism. Theirs is, in certain respects, a revolution - albeit only partly conscious - a genuine working-class reckoning against a kind of music deemed excessively intellectual or complex, and thus bourgeois.

Ozzy and his bandmates' primary goal was, above all, to "save" their own lives from a future of factory work for the rest of their days, to free themselves from all their everyday hells. For them, rock was first and foremost a form of redemption and revenge against a society that had, in effect, written them off; it was a way to "cheat" everyone and live a life of success and excess. Coming from a poor family, afflicted by a severe form of dyslexia that drastically undermined his school performance, a frequent victim of bullying, and a "guest" at his city's juvenile detention center, Ozzy's life is full of episodes that vividly convey just how hard it was for him to find a place in British society as a young man.

It was none other than Tony Iommi, his schoolmate, who was one of the most feared bullies tormenting him during adolescence. A fan of blues and rock'n'roll (his favorite band was the Shadows), Iommi came close to seeing his career cut short before it even began, in 1968, when a factory accident led to the amputation of the fingertips of his right middle and ring fingers. Iommi is left-handed, and this accident made it impossible to play guitar with the necessary precision. He tried playing right-handed without success. At one point, deep in depression and by then convinced he would have to give up his career as a guitarist, he learned that jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt had suffered an even more serious hand injury and had still managed to keep playing. Iommi realized that, perhaps, with the help of some kind of prosthesis, he might be able to manage. So he devised a homemade method, covering his amputated fingertips with plastic melted down from bottle caps using a lighter. While this allowed him to press down on the strings with force, it also reduced his speed; he therefore decided it was necessary to loosen the strings slightly and make them less taut, tuning all six strings down half a step. With this trick he managed to play guitar, but above all, quite unknowingly, he created that anomalous, distinctive sound that today we immediately recognize as Sabbath-like. After other experiences in minor bands, Black Sabbath formed when Iommi and drummer Bill Ward read an ad in a record shop:

Ozzy Zig looking for band. Has own amplification.

Iommi, who knew Ozzy well, was not at all convinced of his former schoolmate's abilities, but granted him an audition anyway. Ozzy Osbourne showed up to the audition acting like a half-deranged madman, with a leash tied to a shoe, as if it were a pet. Ozzy, besides bringing an exponentially high dose of madness and an almost total absence of any sense of limits, brought along guitarist Geezer Butler, who would play bass. With the lineup thus completed, the band initially chose to call themselves Polka Tolka Blues Band, before changing their name to Black Sabbath, after a Mario Bava film ("I tre volti della paura", released abroad precisely under the title Black Sabbath).

The golden age

The band is formed and ready for its debut, which comes in 1970 with an album that, much maligned at the time (the usual provocateur Lester Bangs tore it to shreds), has all the hallmarks of a pioneering work that would define a new kind of sound, as well as being among the best of their career alongside the following "Paranoid". Hard rock is still taking its first steps (consider that Deep Purple's "In Rock" would come out a few months later, while the celebrated fourth album by Led Zeppelin would arrive almost two years later), yet the Birmingham quartet is already showing a new path and a new approach.

Black Sabbath (February 1970) is a manifesto of rock fused with occultism and satanism, the definitive evolution of what bands like Coven or Black Widow had already done, enriching it with a far rawer, more violent sound. The cover, depicting a witch in a wood with an old abandoned house behind her, is extremely iconic and devilish. Anyone who first listened to the title track wearing headphones while staring fixedly at the cover can't help but fondly recall that feeling of total immersion and fear. The title track is indeed the band's first masterpiece, in some ways the most authentic and pure of their entire career. Rain and thunder immediately conjure an imaginary landscape of darkness and solitude, followed by two slow, powerful notes accompanied by the sound of funeral bells. It's a new world, one in which you are entirely at the mercy of evil; the rawness of the guitar, the power of the bass, the slow tempos and the empty spaces into which a possessed drumming bursts, upend the landscape of the early '70s. Ozzy declaims words of despair as the chosen victim of the sabbath, no god can help him despite his anguished invocation. The monolithic first part is followed by a final acceleration that shows just how unfounded the accusations of a lack of imagination or technique really are. "Black Sabbath" strikes above all for its simplicity (three simple notes repeated at maximum volume), but within this apparent simplicity lies the genius of having created something no one else had managed to achieve with such effectiveness.

The album's second masterpiece is "Sleeping Village", a slow, hypnotic guitar arpeggio that introduces a world of dreamlike horror, followed by "The Warning", which could have been a perfect track (the magnificent bass intro) were it not for its excessive length and a jam session that betrays unexpected ties to the psychedelic masters. The remaining tracks follow the same path between occultism and satanism, where a contrast seems to emerge between a bourgeois, conservative reality and a nihilistic, rebellious provincial or rural world, which sees in Satan not so much a solution as at least an enjoyable escape from reality. "Evil Woman" and "The Wizard" play on this very note: satanism, or devotion to evil, becomes a pleasant form of entertainment, not unlike watching a horror film at the cinema, all transposed onto a hard-blues foundation with a distinctly Zeppelin-esque swagger.

Critics failed to grasp the true message of Black Sabbath and made a spectacular misjudgment, relegating the album to the category of "sloppy" and "banal". The public, on the other hand, applauded, sensing in this sound something they had unknowingly been waiting for for years.

Just a few months pass before the band's career explodes with Paranoid (September 1970), the album that brought them stardom but also a level of maturity they would never again match. Black Sabbath grow up, no longer using horror themes purely for entertainment, but turning their attention to the real horrors of war. With the tempo slowed down even further and the power turned up, along comes "War Pigs", a hard-rock supertrack, cutting, exasperating and monolithic. The human "monsters", the pigs who bring war (more or less the pigs of Pink Floyd's "Animals", seven years later) are far more cruel than the beloved witches or anemic vampires. But the whole album is a collection of classics, starting with the title track, perhaps the most famous hard & heavy song in the world, though paradoxically the least significant on the record.

“Planet Caravan” brings together seemingly irreconcilable worlds like esotericism and hippie psychedelia, as does, in a vaguer way, the slow and hypnotic “Electric Funeral”, macabre and dark as well as a forerunner of new ways of playing and conceiving metal, anticipating doom metal. The famous riff of “Iron Man” is one of their hard-rock high points, while “Hand Of Doom” is yet another glimpse into the future, this time with funereal sonorities that transfigure its bluesy foundations. The title is also believed to have inspired the very name of doom metal. No one could ever have imagined that four such mismatched lads could achieve such milestones in under a year. The short instrumental “Rat Salad” is a hard, direct jam session with an ending that is once again vaguely Grateful Dead-like, without overstaying its welcome. “Fairies Wear Boots” is yet another classic that returns to the epic of everyday life, to that constant struggle that is the existence of the English working-class provincial worker, who finds salvation (the only break from non-life in an existence where it's hard to find purpose or meaning) only in music or in a night spent at the pub. Osbourne's epic is that of someone determined to live, yet also aware that death is always at his side. The fitting rhythm for this way of life is the slow flow of notes of this newborn proto-doom, comparable to the slow, measured steps of a zombie.

In 1971 comes Master Of Reality, an LP that confirms the formula of Paranoid and is essentially an even darker evolution of it, thanks to the further lowering of the tuning (by a tone and a half). The three great classics are the hugely imitated “Children Of The Grave”, a sort of Bible for any aspiring metal musician, “Lord Of This World”, another riff with that pacing that would become typical of doom and which stands as a direct descendant of “Hand Of Doom”, and “Into The Void”, even slower and more obsessive. “Sweet Leaf” plays the card of transgression, exalting marijuana over a base that anticipates stoner rock by twenty years, while Iommi plays two short instrumental interludes (“Embryo” and “Orchid”) that reveal unsuspected classical influences. “Solitude” turns towards slow, psychedelic atmospheres, even including a flute that sounds like a psych-folk version of “Planet Caravan”.

This initial trilogy could be defined as belonging to their classic period, with three albums fairly similar to one another and a style that is by now recognizable. Not always the favourite of more traditional rockers, the album is today considered a cornerstone for numerous stoner, sludge and doom bands, who draw on it with devotion.

Black Sabbath could have gone on repeating themselves, and according to their main detractors that's all they ever did in their career, but in reality that's not quite the case.

Vol. 4 (1972) crowns their most inspired period and formalizes the canons of a genre, representing the natural evolution of a journey begun just two years earlier. Vol. 4 pushes the band's dark, gloomy side to the extreme, reaching a black peak never equalled again.

Tracks like “Snowblind” or the proto-doom of “Under The Sun” are monolithic, yet also inclined towards a certain poetic quality in the lyrics. “Supernaut” might be one of their very best tracks ever, perfectly reconciling speed and darkness. “Wheel Of Confusion” stands out above all for its tightrope-walking finale, “Cornucopia” is a new doom chapter, while “Change” is an unusual ballad of just piano and voice. “St. Vitus Dance” finally serves as a cornerstone on which stoner bands would build. With their fourth album the band closes a circle, the trilogy becomes a tetralogy that would have no sequel.

The progressive influence

The accusation of constantly recycling the same stylistic devices, not unfounded indeed, is decisively overcome with Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973), an album that marks a decisive and, all things considered, surprising change. The shift is towards prog music, which in those years was enjoying great artistic and commercial success, so evident that keyboards become an integral part of the band's sound thanks to the collaboration of Rick Wakeman, the historic keyboardist of Yes as well as a legendary icon of all prog music.

It's undoubtedly a turning-point album, a turn that oddly would have no real follow-up, and it's also probably their last great trove of classics. The peak is reached on the tracks made in collaboration with Wakeman, above all the hypnotic, enchanting “Who Are You?”, a thoroughly successful meeting of prog and the Sabbath universe, a synth loop somewhere between lysergic and witchy that shows just how capable Black Sabbath truly are of changing. The opening of the title track is a cutting riff that has become legend throughout all of rock, essentially a manifesto for the band that softens the tones but not the substance. Proof of this is “A National Acrobat”, born of guitar and bass chasing one another, dark, mature offspring of the war pigs of a few years earlier.

“Fluff” returns to acoustic tracks, but this time with superb inspiration. “Sabbra Cadabra” is the second track in which Wakeman's synth makes itself heard, turning progressive fairy tales into restless scenes of sabbaths and witches. Another track worth noting is certainly “Killing Yourself To Live”, which shows just how central nihilism is to the philosophy of Osbourne and his bandmates, not merely escapism and entertainment but a disenchanted approach to existence that would influence entire generations of metal musicians and beyond. Closing the album is “Spiral Architect”, even featuring carpets of strings after an acoustic intro.

Excess and the onset of crisis

Black Sabbath are by now one of the most famous bands in the world: starting out from the underground, they've managed – with simple but highly coherent ideas pursued with sheer stubbornness – to forge their own personal, recognizable style, redefining the canons of a new way of understanding music for new generations, one in which the love of life is as strong as the pull of death. Excess becomes their everyday reality, too much money, too many women, too many drugs, in a life that by now is entirely comparable to what one imagines for a rock star of the star system. Ozzy's behaviour grows ever more extreme, and the first cracks begin to show.

Two years go by and we arrive at Sabotage (1975), which compared to its predecessor is a return to their origins, so a step backwards but certainly a dignified one, with a few tracks worthy of their name. “Hole In The Sky” is one of them: a truly powerful and compelling heavy hit. “Symptom Of The Universe” is another monumental doom anthem, unmissable in any hypothetical list of tracks exemplifying the genre. “Megalomania” is the most original track, between hard-rock riffs and psychedelic stretches in the style of “Planet Caravan”, with no collective allusion whatsoever: everything here is inside Ozzy's own tangled psyche.

The most interesting track is “Supertzar”, a return to the dark atmospheres of “Sleeping Village”, with malevolent choirs and distorted guitars recreating cinematic atmospheres à-la Ennio Morricone. Remarkable.

The true symptoms of a crisis become clearly apparent with Technical Ecstasy (1976), more a collection of previously discarded B-sides than a genuinely accomplished album. Not terrible on the whole, but decidedly lacking in ideas.

After the 1977 tour, Osbourne - by now completely at the mercy of drink and drugs - left the band, only to return shortly after to record their final Lp of the decade, Never Say Die! (1978), universally regarded, not unfairly, as a minor effort. The album is salvaged only by the title track, a clone of "Hole In The Sky" with genuine hit potential, and the acid-tinged keyboards of "Johnny Blade". The rest is easily forgotten.

The Ronnie James Dio years

The tour that followed saw Osbourne completely at the mercy of his own excesses, his behaviour so extreme that the band was forced to "fire" him. Replacing such a charismatic frontman, so beloved by fans, can't have been easy for a band that by then seemed ready for its swan song. Given these circumstances, the release of Heaven And Hell (1980) can fairly be called a small miracle. The chosen replacement was Ronnie James Dio, formerly of Elf and Rainbow, one of the most iconic voices in hard & heavy music. The Black Sabbath sound changed, becoming in some ways more modern, perhaps due to the dawn of the 80s and the new metal movements emerging at the time (Iron Maiden and the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal), or perhaps due to the influence of Dio and the sound of Rainbow.

Heaven And Hell comes close to perfection, with eight tracks calibrated to the millimetre, all of them potential new metal classics. From the epic title track, built on a memorable riff, to the heart-wrenching power ballad "Children Of The Sea", several powerful, melodic cuts ("Neon Knights", "Wishing Well", "Lady Evil"), and the moral testament of the most authentic metal spirit, "Die Young" - everything suggests that Iommi's band benefited from Osbourne's absence and his extreme behaviour, opening the door to a newly inspired era.

Ozzy Osbourne himself, after a long period of depression and addiction, launched a solo career with hugely commercially successful albums, during which he had the misfortune of witnessing the brief artistic arc of guitarist Randy Rhoads, an unrestrained virtuoso of the instrument who died tragically young in a 1982 plane crash. Meanwhile, Black Sabbath underwent their second line-up change. Drummer Bill Ward left the band for family reasons and was replaced by Vinny Appice, brother of the better-known Carmine, drummer of Vanilla Fudge.

This collaboration produced Mob Rules (1981), an Lp that is essentially a clone of its predecessor in every respect. It opens with the granite-solid "Turn Up The Night", the poignant ballad "The Sign Of The Southern Cross" - the new "Children Of The Sea" - the unusual electronic experimentation of "E5150", and the desperate screams of the title track, another Black Sabbath metal anthem.

The album continues with cloying nods to Led Zeppelin ("Slipping Away" is almost a cover) before arriving at the gem "Falling Off The Edge Of The World", which alternates a slow, poetic intro with a dizzying, textbook riff stretched out over nearly six minutes, becoming one of the band's last great tracks. The album closes with an excellent song, a second ballad ("Over And Over"), once again far from banal, but touching and full of emotion.

The "Black Purple" years

After the live album Live Evil (1982), the collaboration with Dio ended over personal differences, with Iommi even calling him a "little Hitler". Appice also left, replaced by the returning Ward. For the vocal role, the choice fell on hard-rock legend Ian Gillan, formerly of Deep Purple. On one hand the choice is understandable, given that he's one of the greatest rock singers of all time; on the other, it reveals just how backward-looking Iommi's thinking had become, stubbornly seeking new solutions in the past when metal, by 1983, with bands like Metallica, had already decisively turned the page.

Dubbed "Black Purple" by critics, the "new" band released Born Again (1983) - playing on the title to mark its third rebirth, after Ozzy and Dio - a decidedly old-fashioned album, with a few decent tracks but undoubtedly forgettable overall. Gillan left shortly after to return to Deep Purple, and Iommi was left completely alone, after bassist Geezer Butler also departed to form the Geezer Butler Band.

It would have seemed like the moment to stop, but Iommi tried his hand as a solo artist and released Seventh Star (1986), shrewdly marketed under the Black Sabbath name when it was in fact an Iommi solo Lp featuring outside guests, including another former Deep Purple voice, Glenn Hughes. The album adds nothing to the band's legacy, save for the attempted pop-rock turn of "No Stranger To Love", fully immersed in 80s rock and borrowing wholesale from Bon Jovi-style ballads. The rivalry between Iommi and Ozzy grew ever sharper, but decisively in favour of the latter, who enjoyed a commercially rewarding career throughout the 80s and 90s, with a handful of worthwhile tracks tailor-made for the MTV generation.

The Tony Martin years, a third way

It seemed like everything was over, but Iommi attempted yet another turn with the arrival of the excellent singer Tony Martin, whose powerful voice could loosely be described as somewhere between Dio and Gillan. With The Eternal Idol (1987), signs of a revival emerge across nine tracks all credited to Iommi, but once again the album fails to leave much of a mark.

Decidedly superior are The Headless Cross (1989) and especially Tyr (1990), which take an epic turn with rediscovered gothic atmospheres, aided by the arrival of former Rainbow drummer Cozy Powell. A Celtic cross looms on the cover of The Headless Cross, setting the stage for a string of imposing (the title track) and lightning-fast ("When Death Calls") riffs.

Tyr is even more convincing, with the epic "Anno Mundi" and "Jerusalem" - Martin's voice leaving nothing to be missed from the band's past - the blisteringly fast "The Law Maker", and a string of tracks devoted to Norse mythology ("The Battle Of Tyr", "Odin's Court", "Valhalla"). It is, in effect, a minor rebirth, even if by this point Black Sabbath had become utterly different from the band of the 70s. From underground outsiders to the fringes of the mainstream, from the proletariat to the bourgeoisie - the step was a short one, as confirmed by Iommi's decision to drop Martin and return to the past for the benefit of nostalgic fans.

The endless reunions

From here on, the band's history reads like that of an extended family caught in a constant cycle of feuds and reconciliations worthy of a Latin American soap opera, complete with mainstream recognition (a Grammy Award in 2000) and even a TV series ("The Osbournes"). The music itself takes a decided backseat. Even so, the '90s generation and American indie rock rightly redefine the historical importance of the original quartet, elevating them to the top of the most respected and revered icons in all of rock.

Iommi's idea of going back in time translates into bringing back Dio on vocals (the man he'd called "a little Hitler" just a few years earlier), Geezer Butler on bass, and Vinny Appice on drums. As often happens, these nostalgia albums made to please the most die-hard fans, recorded for purely commercial reasons, never amount to much, and indeed Dehumanizer (1992) really has nothing to say and pales next to the two classic Dio-era albums of the '80s (Heaven And Hell and Mob Rules).

Honestly, it's hard to understand the point of these releases. This reunion of convenience is destined to end quickly. Dio and Appice leave during the tour, with Dio hastily replaced by Rob Halford of Judas Priest.

Yet another reunion brings back Tony Martin and Geoff Nicholls, who along with Iommi, Geezer Butler and new drummer Bobby Rondinelli record Cross Purposes (1994). Rondinelli is replaced during the tour by Ward, who, as usual, leaves the band quickly, this time together with Butler.

The following year sees the release of Forbidden (1995), which together with its predecessor represents an endless repetition of themselves. Some tracks are decent enough, but the poetic quality of the Tyr era is sorely missing.

Meanwhile Ozzy is a celebrated star who in the '90s still manages to make headlines, with a few songs that easily surpass the entirety of Sabbath's recent output (above all the 1991 track "No More Tears").

The real reunion, the one with Ozzy, has been in the air for some time and is previewed by the 1997 Ozzfest live show, released on the double live album Reunion (1998). Its full realization, however, gets pushed back, presumably for contractual reasons. In the meantime, Black Sabbath take part in various metal festivals, and Iommi puts together a "new" band that is essentially the early Dio-era Black Sabbath under the name Heaven & Hell. They release The Devil You Know (2009), but Dio dies of stomach cancer just a few months later, in 2010.

The definitive reunion

2011, however, is the right year to pick up the thread left hanging in 1979, though not everything goes smoothly: Iommi falls ill and Ward decides to leave, unhappy over certain contractual issues. On June 10, 2013, the long-announced return finally happens: amid trumpet fanfare and a flurry of camera flashes, the already acclaimed 13 hits stores, immediately shooting to the top of the charts (something that hadn't happened in England since the days of Paranoid). The album, made up of eight lengthy compositions (plus a few bonus tracks), is produced by Rick Rubin and meets fans' expectations: heavy, gloomy, apparently menacing, faithful to tradition—maybe too faithful. A carbon copy, with updated sound, of their glorious past deeds. Apocalyptic lyrics, dark imagery, all of it already heard and already known. What comes out of it, then, is a heavy album, in the sense of exhausting, well represented by the paradoxical opener "End Of The Beginning"—meaning, however you look at it, beginning and end are one and the same. Sudden explosions, abrupt stops (so to speak), richly gloomy arpeggiated passages, Ozzy's warped wail singing about voices echoing in his head (perhaps the exhausted neighbors...), melodic bursts that offer a bit of breathing room.

A drag, then, and so a perfect record that brings back to the surface the greatest myth of heavy-doom. Thanks, Tony, Ozzy and Geezer. Watch out for the temperature swings though, since summer has meanwhile exploded.

Contributions by Davide Sechi ("13") and Alessandro Mattedi

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