No. 298: Master of Reality

Band: Black Sabbath
Album: Master of Reality
Why Rolling Stone gets it right: The original stoner rock album, "Master of Reality" hits about a million topics and is a wonderful sequel to "Paranoid."
Why Rolling Stone gets it wrong: I'm a big Sabbath guy, so I'd like to see all of the first four or five Sabbath records on the list; This is the third and final one.
Best song: Pretty much anything on this album is fantastic; My favorite is probably "Lord of this World."
Worst song: "Into the Void" is the only song I don't like.
Is it awesome?: Absolutely.

"Master of Reality" is kind of a hidden gem in the Sabbath catalog. The first record will always be notable for being the band's debut and "Paranoid" is famous for being, well, "Paranoid." "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" was the last of the good Ozzy records and "Black Sabbath Vol. 4" has "Supernaut," of course.

Sometimes, "Master of Reality" gets lost in the shuffle. The album has zero bad songs and has some of the band's highlights. "Lord of this World" is the ideological sequel to "War Pigs," while "Sweet Leaf" is a love song ode to, well, marijuana and probably the first stoner rock record. "Children of the Grave" is, like the first album, heavily occult-based and "Solitude" is easily Ozzy's most tender vocal work.

"After Forever" continues to be, to me, the most confusing of all Sabbath songs. A Tony Iommi-penned number, the song sings the virtues of Christianity. It's been speculated that Iommi was simply being anti-establishment in his writing. In essence, the song was written in sarcasm, some argue. Iommi has never really commented on it, troubling as that is.

But, the beauty of Sabbath, of course, is in the riffs. "Sweet Leaf" opens the album with a heavy, slow burn (sorry) head-banging riff and a thumping Bill Ward drum line. Covered by weed-smoking bands everywhere, it's a classic among classics. The album is filled with similar riffs.

No. 241: Black Sabbath

Band: Black Sabbath
Album: Black Sabbath
Why Rolling Stone gets it right: The world's first big real metal band's debut is nothing short of amazing. The song's deft blending of hard riffing and blues structures was mirrored by only Led Zeppelin and even then the sound was lessened by Zep's formula. Unrelenting and punishing, “Black Sabbath” is a masterpiece.
Why Rolling Stone gets it wrong: As I mentioned in my piece on ”Paranoid,” RS and its list is woefully ignorant of metal and this placing shows that. Save for Metallica and Zeppelin, there are really only a few metal records.
Best song: “The Wizard” is important in that it is largely the space where blues rock turned itself into metal. The harmonica, the riff, the drum fills... it all came to a head here.
Worst song: It's nearly a perfect record, though the ending track, "A Bit of Finger/Sleeping Village/Warning," goes on a little too long.
Is it awesome?: Yes.

Alternative media gadfly, former Black Flag singer and all-around awesome dude Henry Rollins has been doing spoken word tours since the waning days of Black Flag. On one of the albums recording on one of those tours, he lamented the name “el Nino” to describe the weather pattern that afflicted southern California in the 1990s (“El Niño” meaning “the child”):

Maybe we should cal it “The First Four Black Sabbath Albums.” That would work. [TV announcer voice] “Bakersfield California was destroyed today by the first four Black Sabbath Albums.” [/TV Announcer Voice]“Fuck yeah it was!Have you ever heard “Paranoid? Goddamn! That would destroy my town right now!”

Most people are introduced to the band through “Paranoid,” but“Black Sabbath” is where the band's sound – obviously, as it was the band's debut – began. Like the first Zeppelin record, “Black Sabbath” reflected the band's idea of hard rock going forward: An amalgamation of Eric Clapton-style blues rock, the fury of American protopunk and the band's dreary world outlook.

The beginning of the record, in fact, defines dreary. Like the Door's “Riders on the Storm,” “Black Sabbath” begins with rain as it leads into Tony Iommi's (literally) devilish riff.

It's devilish in that... Well, I'll let our good friend Wikipedia explain it:

The main riff is constructed with a harmonic progression including an interval of tritone, that is to say the augmented fourth. That interval was banned from medieval ecclesiastical singing because of its dissonant quality, which led monks to call it diabolus in musica—"the devil in music."

In addition the tritone, the song's tempo and tone is the basis for a lot of modern doom metal. Bands like Earth, Boris and the like use similar slowdown metal as a basis.

The song's lyrical theme is supposedly based on a dream that Geezer Butler recounted to chief lyricist Ozzy Osbourne where the devil was standing before him as he lay in bed (I'm assuming this was a drug experience).

The album's other two highlights are also somewhat drug and occult-induced. While the song “N.I.B.” isn't clearly about drugs, it is sung from the point of view of Lucifer (“My name is Lucifer, please take my hand”), though Geezer Butler claims it's about the devil falling in love and changing his ways.

The band claims“The Wizard” is about Gandalf, but because I hate and constantly mock “The Lord Of The Rings,”I prefer the idea that the song is about the band's drug dealer. Since the band has never fully denied this, I'll go with it.

The song itself is an upbeat romp of a blues song, complete with Ozzy Osbourne's awesome harmonica. Iommi's solo sounds a bit like some of his later solos, reaching ridiculous sustained high notes wile staying within the song's theme. The drum fills and bass drops are also notable, as the song is one of the many Sabbath tunes that feature each player within the song.

Heavy metal is nothing without Sabbath. This, in fact, is the first pure metal abums and one of the genre's best.

No. 130: Paranoid

Band: Black Sabbath
Album: Paranoid
Why Rolling Stone gets it right: Even moreso than Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath is the metal band. The crunching guitar, the hammer-ish drumming, the rolling bass and Ozzie's wail all scream metal more than any other band. The invention of the genre basically came from "Paranoid." In short, Sabbath is the metal Beatles.
Why Rolling Stone gets it wrong: This is a record that should be in the top 20, at least.
Best song: It's hard to choose which is best, though "War Pigs" is, lyrically, the standout. The epic protest song is fantastic and features enough time changes to make Geddy Lee's head spin. Or... "Iron Man." The riff in "Iron Man" is known by many as the original ad for "Beavis And Butthead," but like "War Pigs," is has time changes and one of the best guitar riffs ever recorded.
Worst song: There isn't a bad song, but "Planet Caravan" is a little out of place.
Is it awesome?: Yes. Absolutely. One of my favorite albums of all time.

Let's face it, metal as a genre is shit on. Sure, the Zeppelins and Hendrixes of the world are critically praised, but pure metal bands -- those that don't get thrown into other genres -- never really get the praise they deserve. And it seems whenever a band stinks and has some theatrics to them, they become "metal" (see KISS). During the '80s, metal was mostly a joke.

But, there's some great stuff in metal. There's some really smart metal bands -- I'd venture that there is a higher percentage of literate metal than there is of literate rock. Black Sabbath is the lynch pin. Like Zeppelin, Sabbath took the blues scales and some riffs so popular with the Stones and turned it the hell up. Like a lot of bands in the '70s, Sabbath took issue with conformity ("Faeries Wear Boots"), love ("Paranoid"), war ("Iron Man" and "War Pigs") and scary sci fi ("Hand Of Doom"). All on the same, mind-blowing album.

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"Paranoid" is metal. There's no way around it. It's hard, it's heavy and it's based on riffs. Big, giant, great, crunching riffs. Like Keith Richards, Tony Iommi understands the need for a band to be centered around something melodic yet powerful. "Paranoid" is melodic and powerful.

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That's not to mention Iommi's solos. Like Clapton and Richards, the strength of Iommi's solos are in their simplicity. he wasn't the fastest up the fretboard, but he was fast enough to burn through huge notes. Taking a cue from the blues masters, he circled his solos on certain scales to create a familiarity within the song.

"Paranoid" is the first album I learned on the guitar. Like "Nevermind," the album isn't technically impossible of a guitar player, but the power in the songs is larger than life. Iommi's sound is as signature as they come; You can identify a Black Sabbath riff from the first four notes.

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And then, there's Ozzy.

Save for Johnny Rotten or Chris Cornell, there probably isn't a voice more suited to its genre than Ozzy's. Ozzy's half scream/half croon is a metal establishment and says "metal" as much as anything. His wail sounds like a banshee (The end of "Electric Funeral") and the snide, calm dissertation-singing (the beginning "Hand Of Doom") is as iconic.

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Sabbath took, like, five tries to get into the rock and roll hall of fame. It's a little strange and something that bothered the hell out of me. The Allmans and Skynyrd got in before Sabbath did, which particularly disturbed me.

Not to take anything away from the Allmans or Skynyrd -- though, I'm not keen on either -- but Sabbath's sound is one of the most influential, ever. Take any band popular during the '90s and you have Sabbath. The most important indie rock label of that decade -- Sub Pop Records -- willfully said that their goal was to bring bands out with a Black Sabbath meets Black Flag sound. Not a Beatles meets Black Flag -- Sabbath.

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"Paranoid" is metal's "With The Beatles." It doesn't destroy the genre, it perfects it. Taking the fuzz of The Kinks, the blues riffs of the Stones and the apocalyptic lyrics of art rock, Sabbath created something new: Heavy metal as we know it.