Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut album is arguably the most important heavy record album ever made – and for a limited time it’s available on vinyl for a knockdown price at Amazon as part of their huge Black Friday/Cyber Weekend/whatever we're calling it now sale.
And that’s not the only Sabbath deal on offer. Amazon have also reduced the price on another of the band’s early classics, Vol.4 , and the double-vinyl anthology The Ultimate Collection. If you're yet to add any Sabbath to your collection, in my opinion these are the albums to start with.
- Black Sabbath, Black Sabbath vinyl:
£27.97, now £23.77 @Amazon - Black Sabbath, Vol. 4 vinyl:
£29.99, now £24.92 @Amazon - Black Sabbath, Ultimate Collection vinyl:
£30.86, now £25.99 @Amazon - Shop more Sabbath vinyl/merch in the Amazon UK Cyber Weekend sale
- Our pick of this year's best Black Friday vinyl deals
Vol.4 was originally released in 1972 and features landmark tracks such as Supernaut, Snowblind and the famous ballad Changes.
The Ultimate Collection focuses purely on Sabbath’s first imperial phase in the 1970s with Ozzy Osbourne as singer. This double album has all of the band’s most famous and influential songs, including Paranoid, Iron Man, War Pigs, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Children Of The Grave, Sweet Leaf and of course the signature song Black Sabbath.
But let’s focus here on that first Sabbath album, released in 1970. The whole thing was recorded in a matter of hours, and yet the album’s impact would echo through the decades.
It is one of the seminal rock records, a touchstone for countless heavy metal bands. And it happened more by accident than design.
In 1968, when the four members of Sabbath’s original line-up first got together as The Polka Tulk Blues Band, their music was as inspired by the stars of the British blues-rock boom such as Fleetwood Mac.
All four members of the band were born and raised in Birmingham – “within a mile of each other,” as singer Ozzy Osbourne said. Ozzy and guitarist Tony Iommi had known each other at school. Iommi and drummer Bill Ward had played in a band named Mythology, and bassist Terry ‘Geezer’ Butler previously played rhythm guitar for Ozzy’s band Rare Breed.
It was in early 1969, after a change of name from The Polka Tulk Blues Band to Earth, that Iommi heard the first Led Zeppelin album and vowed to make music that was, in his words, “even heavier”. What he discovered, by chance, was a sound of subliminal power.
In a simple three-note riff, Iommi unwittingly recreated a dissonant harmonic scale known for centuries as diabolus in musica – the Devil in music. Iommi’s riff was the foundation for a song in which heavy rock power was matched by visions of Satan and hellfire in Ozzy’s lyrics. In a stroke of genius, they named this song, and then rechristened the band, after a 1963 horror movie starring Boris Karloff: Black Sabbath.
The debut album was recorded in October 1969 at Regent Sound studio in London. According to Ozzy, it was completed in one session, “12 hours straight”.
Iommi remembered it differently: three afternoons on consecutive days.
For much of the album the band played super-heavy, on riff-driven songs such as The Wizard, Behind The Wall Of Sleep and N.I.B.
In addition, there were two cover versions on which Sabbath exhibited a broader stylistic range. Evil Woman, essentially a pop song, was originally recorded by little-known Minnesota band Crow. There was also evidence of the band’s blues roots in their version of Warning, a 1967 single by The Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation, transformed by Sabbath into a trippy ten-minute jam.
But it was that one song, so dark and sinister, that defined the album and the band.
Black Sabbath was the opening track, prefaced by a chillingly atmospheric introduction: the sound of rainfall, rumbling thunder and the ominous tolling of a church bell.
In Iommi’s grinding riffing and Ozzy’s anguished wailing was a sound like nothing ever heard before. And the Satanic imagery sealed the band’s reputation: Black Sabbath, the Devil’s disciples.
“It was great to have that kind of image,” Geezer Butler said, “because people were going, well, are they or aren’t they?”
Released on February 13, 1970, the album made the UK top ten, and in the US it sold a million.
With that, Black Sabbath had arrived: as the heaviest of the heavy, and the scariest rock band on God’s Earth.
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