Black Sabbath (1970)
Black Sabbath is a 1970 blues rock album by Black Sabbath.
Rain, a distant bell, three doom-laden notes from Tony Iommi's guitar. Black Sabbath's debut opens with the sound that would name a genre. Recorded across a single day in October 1969, the Birmingham quartet of Ozzy Osbourne, Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward traded blues-rock swing for something slower, heavier and shadowed with occult imagery. The title track drags through its tritone menace while 'The Wizard' and 'N.I.B.' prove a band already fluent in weight. Widely called the first true heavy metal album, it laid the foundation for doom, sludge and every darker rock sound that followed.
Quick answers
What is Black Sabbath about?
Rain, a distant bell, three doom-laden notes from Tony Iommi's guitar. Black Sabbath's debut opens with the sound that would name a genre. Recorded across a single day in October 1969, the Birmingham quartet of Ozzy Osbourne, Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward traded blues-rock swing for something slower, heavier and shadowed with occult imagery. The title track drags through its tritone menace while 'The Wizard' and 'N.I.B.' prove a band already fluent in weight. Widely called the first true heavy metal album, it laid the foundation for doom, sludge and every darker rock sound that followed.
When was Black Sabbath released?
Black Sabbath was released in 1970.
Who made Black Sabbath?
Black Sabbath is by Black Sabbath.
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Black Sabbath in our writing
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A few thoughts on Black Sabbath
Fans of this record's slow, occult dread should try the 2016 game Doom, whose churning riff-driven score owes Black Sabbath a direct debt. The folk-horror film The Wicker Man shares its ritual unease, and Metallica's Master of Puppets carries the riff-craft forward into thrash. Sabbath built the room all three live in.
Albums that carry heavy metal's DNA forward from this record
Black Sabbath's tritone riff and doom-laden pace effectively invented heavy metal in a single afternoon of recording. Paranoid pushed that same band's sound further within the year, Back in Black shows the genre's hard-rock cousin at full force, and Metallica's self-titled record, Death Magnetic, St. Anger, Load and Reload trace how one band carried that same heaviness through three different decades.
Films and games that carry the same doom-laden weight
Black Sabbath opens on rain, a distant bell, and three notes shadowed with occult dread, the sound that gave doom metal its name. The Wicker Man carries that same folk-horror dread into 1973 British cinema, id Software's Doom channels a similar hellish menace, AC/DC: Live at River Plate captures a stadium's worth of that same heaviness on stage, and Pink Floyd's Animals brings an equally bleak weight in album form.