What is this that stands before me? Figure in black which points at me, turn 'round quick and start to run...

Black Sabbath - "Black Sabbath" (1970) - Warner Bros.

Hello Friends,

Its a great night for drinking cocktails and conjuring demons by the light of the full Hunter's moon.

And there's no better soundtrack to a stoned and spooky October evening than the original doom rockers, Black Sabbath.  Tonight we're cranking their self-titled debut record on the ol' turntable.  An album that remains one of rock & roll's most influential featuring a sound that was unlike anything else being done at the time!  Its the sound of a demonic jam session outside the gates to Hell where partygoers are clamoring to get invited in. Hippies, Jesus freaks and holy rollers step aside, tonight we're getting our faces melted with the deliquents, the long hairs, the other assorted ne'er do wells and outcasts. 

Couldn't agree more!

Things start off, like most good things, with some menacing thunderclaps and foreboding rain.  "Black Sabbath" would remain one of the band's most evil and sludgiest-sounding songs. Featuring a doom-filled guitar playing the devil's chord over and over again until the dam finally breaks open and Hell is unleashed in the form of one Tony Iommi's imitable guitar solos.  Fucking great!  If the dark lord Satan himself isn't sitting at the barstool next to you after playing this song (on vinyl) then you really should pick the needle up and play it again!

Next up, "The Wizard" is conjured.  Like Sabbath's contemporaries, Led Zeppelin, a lot of the imagery being used seems pretty influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien.  "The Wizard" is no exception; a heavy rocker featuring some bluesy harmonica, stomping Bill Ward drums, misty mountains and some more great guitar & bass work.

From Tolkien the band shifts gears to the much darker worlds of H.P. Lovecraft.  "Behind the Wall of Sleep" is based on the Lovecraft short story, "Beyond the Wall of Sleep", about a spirit who tries to communicate with the living through a prisoner in a mental hospital. Its another sludgy masterpiece featuring Ozzy's mournful vocals repeating the line "Take your body to a corpse..."

Closing out the side is a fantastic, heavily wah-wah'd bass solo by Geezer Butler ("Bassically") that blends right into the epic, "N.I.B."  "N.I.B."-- a song about Lucifer falling in love for the first time and begging this woman to spend eternity with him-- sounds like what Cream might have sounded like if Anton Lavey had produced Disraeli Gears.  

The fun continues on Side Two.  "Wicked World" picks up with a boogie beat and a guitar riff that sounds a little like something Robbie Kreiger was doing on The Doors' song "Wild Child".  The band switches focus from the supernatural to the political here and instead of singing about Wizards, figures cloaked in black and the dating troubles of Satan, "Wicked World" seems to focus its attention on the Viet Nam war and the ineptitude of elected leaders.  (I guess in this way, it would be kind of a precursor to "War Pigs".)

To wrap things up is the 15 minute suite, "A Bit Of Finger / Sleeping Village / Warning". 

"A Bit of Finger" starts off pastorally enough featuring some minstrel-like finger-picking by Iommi while Osbourne sings about crying cockerels and soft blowing breezes accented by the occasional spooky twang of a Jews Harp. (Actually, the guitar work here sounds like it might have influenced the finger-picking at the beginning of Radiohead's "Street Spirit".)

This gives way to the ripping instrumental "Sleeping Village" which would not sound out of place as a jam on Led Zeppelin I.

Things get bass-y and heavy again on "Warning", a cover of a song by The Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation.  Its bluesy and Zeppelin-y, but its also weird-sounding, psychedelic and even a little sloppy (in a GOOD way!).

An essential record to any rock & roll collection (especially for fans of early hard rock/heavy metal!)  Black Sabbath must've freaked a lot of people out in 1970, but still holds up very, very well today.  

RATING: 5 my name is Lucifer, please take me by the hand out of 5