Forty nine years ago yesterday, the founding statement of Heavy Metal was released to the unsuspecting masses, just like witches at black masses. Wrong album, I know. It would be easy nowadays to overlook the importance of Black Sabbath, the first record by Black Sabbath. After all, metal is everywhere these days: your average pre-fab pop star wears Iron Maiden t-shirts, Motörhead's Ace of Spades is used in commercials, Alice Cooper shows up in every TV show and you're probably reading this on your phone while sitting on a KISS-branded toilet.
But in 1970, this was some spooky, otherworldly shit the likes of which no one had ever heard before. Sure, other bands like the Kinks, the Who, Hendrix, Cream, Iron Butterfly, Jeff Beck, Led Zeppelin and even the Beatles had recorded some truly heavy shit before. And Vincebus Eruptum by Blue Cheer is widely considered to be the first proto-metal manifesto.
But Black Sabbath was the first fully forged Heavy Metal statement, complete with evil lyrics, morbid album art, an obsession with the occult and the progressive riddance of the Blues.
That is what sets Black Sabbath apart: a truly European, gothic approach to their songwriting. Like every rock band of the era they were influenced by the Blues, but before any other they were able to let go of that influence. Every metal band since 1970 owes them a debt. From the Wagnerian bombast of Iron Maiden to the scummy punk riffing of Napalm Death, the Satanic chants of Ghost and even the hooligan breaks of Limp Bizkit... For better or for worse, Black Sabbath have informed every artist to ever put on a leather jacket and turn up the gain on their distortion pedal.
But what makes Black Sabbath better than other metal acts are their songs. Not just the mighty riffs concocted by Tony Iommi but also those anthemic melodies and lyrics of apocalypse, madness, drugs and alienation
I am a big fan of Black Sabbath and I truly enjoy every incarnation of the band. I can find things to enjoy in every era, even in some of their most abysmal records (and there have been a few...)
But nothing will ever match the impact of those first four records in which they laid down the Law of Heavy Metal, forever changing the cultural landscape, and the world. That they managed to finally reap what they sowed so long ago is a fitting coda to a story that began one year shy of half a century ago, when they published that first chapter that would become the blueprint for everything that is heavy, a cultural artefact that would spawn a million demonic bastard children, a rallying cry for the downtrodden, the outcasts, the freaks, the disenfranchised: What is this that stands before me?
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