Almost five decades ago, the toll of a bell and rolling thunder marked the conception of an ear splittingly monolithic riff. In that moment, BLACK SABBATH and the sound of heavy metal were forged. The band embarked on what vocalist Ozzy Osbourne describes as the most incredible adventure you could think of, a journey that would go on to define a genre.
Essential: a masterpiece of rock music
This was my favourite SABBATH album when I was young. I suppose that was because it was so heavy and straightforward. I guess that's why it's not rated nearly as high as I think it should be on this site, because this is a Prog site. I still rate it as a masterpiece just like "Paranoid".
Milton Keanes, pianist for the British trio Jazz Sabbath, first emerged in early 2020 claiming that his group's lost 1960s album had been plagiarized by heavy metal pioneers Black Sabbath. In truth, Keanes is the alias of Adam Wakeman, longtime keyboardist for Ozzy Osbourne, and he came up with the idea for his fictional jazz combo while on a tour with Black Sabbath. The project's debut, a collection of Black Sabbath songs arranged for a jazz piano trio, appeared in 2020, followed by a second volume in 2022. In 2013, Adam Wakeman – son of legendary Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman – was on a European tour supplying the off-stage keyboard parts for metal icons Black Sabbath.
Poor Black Sabbath had really fallen on hard times after the departure of Ronnie James Dio. He might have been the last truly respected singer in their history, and even his efforts couldn't win over the Ozzy Osbourne fans who had jumped ship and started following Osbourne's solo career. So The Sabbath Stones tries to detail the period between Dio's initial run with the group and their reunion with Osbourne in 1997…
Poor Black Sabbath had really fallen on hard times after the departure of Ronnie James Dio. He might have been the last truly respected singer in their history, and even his efforts couldn't win over the Ozzy Osbourne fans who had jumped ship and started following Osbourne's solo career…
With 1973's Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, heavy metal godfathers Black Sabbath made a concerted effort to prove their remaining critics wrong by raising their creative stakes and dispensing unprecedented attention to the album's production standards, arrangements, and even the cover artwork. As a result, bold new efforts like the timeless title track, "A National Acrobat," and "Killing Yourself to Live" positively glistened with a newfound level of finesse and maturity, while remaining largely faithful, aesthetically speaking, to the band's signature compositional style…