Black Sabbath Paranoid

We Sold Our Soul for Rock 'n' Roll is a compilation album by Black Sabbath, originally released on 1 December 1975 in the UK and then on 3 February 1976 in the U.S…

This import, three-CD box set collects Black Sabbath's first six albums in near-entirety, excising a few lesser tracks and shorter instrumental pieces like "Laguna Sunrise," the only track from We Sold Our Soul for Rock 'n' Roll not present ("Children of the Grave" is here, but mistitled "Embryo," which is actually its instrumental introduction). The tracks are ordered chronologically, often in their original LP sequence. It isn't as necessary to hear Sabbath's albums in their original forms as, for example, Led Zeppelin's, so if you can find it, this set is a less expensive (and definitive) way to acquire all of Black Sabbath's worthwhile material at once.

Live Evil is the first official live album by British heavy metal band Black Sabbath. The previously released Live at Last (1980) was not sanctioned by the band. Live Evil peaked at number 37 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart. Live Evil hit both the UK Top 30 and the US Top 40 Album charts. AllMusic states that "Live Evil does benefit from a crystal clear, in-your-face sound, and by showcasing even amounts of both Ozzy and Dio material, effectively documents Black Sabbath's renascent tours of the early '80s. Ronnie certainly has the vocal chops, if not the same everyman charm, to handle the Osbourne classics, but his incessant banter between (and during!) songs sometimes verges on the unbearable." The album is included in the Black Sabbath box set The Rules of Hell. The Live Evil album cover features literal interpretations of Sabbath songs. Universal Music Corporation released a "deluxe edition" worldwide in 2010 which contained the entire album in its original running order.

The shortest album of Black Sabbath's glory years, Master of Reality is also their most sonically influential work. Here Tony Iommi began to experiment with tuning his guitar down three half-steps to C#, producing a sound that was darker, deeper, and sludgier than anything they'd yet committed to record. (This trick was still being copied 25 years later by every metal band looking to push the limits of heaviness, from trendy nu-metallers to Swedish deathsters.) Much more than that, Master of Reality essentially created multiple metal subgenres all by itself, laying the sonic foundations for doom, stoner and sludge metal, all in the space of just over half an hour…