Black Sabbath – Sabbath Bloody Sabbath – 1973
SBS opens with a demonstrative salvo. The title track, with it’s enormous verses and the quiet counter choruses, says we’re a long way from that industrial town. The boys are holding on to the mantle of metal god and refusing to let it go. What we’re left with is almost a manifesto.
Just what is “Fluff”? Can you imagine being a die hard Sabbathhead and hearing that for the first time? I actually can because Randy Rhodes did a lot of that stuff for Ozzy years later and what a teenage music fan like me did was get validation out of. “It’s like classical music! See! They can really play, Mom!” This is the stuff that Tenacious D would mock 25 years later. Hell, almost 30. And, sure it’s indulgent and pretentious, but that’s what ROCK is supposed to be, dammit.
And, oh, “Sabbra Cadabra”. What rifftastic treat is that, huh? Is that Yes’s Rick Wakeman ripping it up on Keys? Hell, yes, it is.
Then again: Ring ring…Hello, Sabbath? My name is Gary Numan. I really like what you’ve done on that track, “Who Are You”. Would you mind if I totally appropriate that sound, never give you credit and try to make an entire living based on it? No? Great, thanks.”
But I kind of like that track. It’s very Jon Carpenter. Very Dark Star.
There’s no way pre-SBS Sabbath would have been able to record something as grandiose and assured as “Looking for Today”. A song as much fun to listen to as it must be to play, it has no relationship to “Iron Man” or “Paranoid” or “War Pig”. But that’s fine, in fact, it’s more than fine. It’s important. It separates this more mature band from its raw youth and elevates the album to something unexpected and special. And “Spiral Architect” fits that bill perfectly. It couldn’t exist on the previous four albums, not like this. This is great.
Grade: A+
ASide: Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Sabbra Cadabra
BlindSide: A National Acrobat, Fluff, Looking for Today, Spiral Architect
