Hi, everyone. Headthony Acheyano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a classic review of the first Black Sabbath album, Black Sabbath.

Here we have the 1970 debut album of UK metal outfit, Black Sabbath, a record that is widely considered to be the inception of metal music itself. And an album I found myself going back to quite a bit with the recent passing of frontman Ozzy Osbourne. And while this LP is not the band's most popular, personally, I find it to be the most worth discussing given the crossroads that it sits at culturally and what it started, which wasn't just metal, but also one of the most prolific, relentless, and impressive runs of any rock band.

Because from 1970 to 1975, Black Sabbath dropped six game-changing, fantastic, classic albums. Whether you're talking about the hit-packed Paranoid, which was also dropped the same year as Black Sabbath's debut, featured tracks such as "Iron Man" and "War Pigs", or the drug-fueled, Vol. 4, which the liner notes the band does a shout out to cocaine. No wonder the jams on that record were so fiery and intense. Then you also have the frankly underrated Sabotage, where some of Tony Iommi's guitar work sets the stage for thrash metal years before the genre would formally become a thing.

But while Black Sabbath were nothing if not ahead of the curve, the reason a record like this is such a great project to talk about is because it really lays out the lineage and the influences of metal music itself. Because as unique as moments like the opening title track on this project are, stylistically, this record also shares a lot of overlap musically and aesthetically with many prevailing hard rock acts at the time, be it either Led Zeppelin or Cream, the Hendrix experience.

But a few key things set Black Sabbath apart from many of their contemporaries, like their presentation and lyrical themes, the dark theatrics that surrounded nearly everything they did. Because this band didn't just want to simply rock. In their most career-defining moments, they also instilled a sense of fear and dread into their fans, borrowing not just from horror films, but also occult myths and storytelling, in order to build a world and a vibe that was more unnerving than even some of the most ominous psych rock groups that came before them.

Then there was also Black Sabbath's sound, which has long been praised for its heaviness and has often been credited to this very popular origin story. One where guitarist, Tony Iommi, sliced off the tips of two of his fingers while working at a sheet metal plant as a teenager. But this did not stop his devotion to the guitar and only caused him to basically retool his approach to playing the instrument, which included tuning the strings lower in order to reduce their tension and make them easier to play, resulting in a tone and a sound that further contributed to the dark material Black Sabbath wrote, which you can hear, especially, again, at the start of this album, introduced with the sound of a thunder storm and very creepy bells ringing, eventually giving way to Tony Iommi's blaring guitars that are unabashedly leaning into this diminished interval lick that sounds so evil, so sinister. You can find numerous videos on YouTube talking about the idea of this "devil's chord," its greater history, and why it contributed to this sense of Black Sabbath's music sounding so evil.

And with how hard Black Sabbath is going directly into that with this track, you could tell that they really knew what they were doing, had an almost full and complete sense of what they were going for, and perfectly achieving it, especially given Ozzy's performance on the track, which he is not just singing on this song. I mean, Ozzy, truth be told, was never the most technically proficient singer out there, but he was definitely a performer.

So I mean, even if there were elements of his vocal leads that are a little all over the place or even sloppy to a degree, he was selling this performance in a way that no other frontman for a hard rock band was at this time, especially given his blood curdling screams and pleas for help at various points of the song. Like his over-the-top delivery handily makes him one of the most attention-grabbing things on the track. That is until the band collectively comes together and goes into this hellfire finish with screaming solos and this harsh wall of rhythm guitars and bass that has this persistent "wah wah wah wah" shape to them.

Again, incredibly dark track whose spine-tingling characteristics still very much read, and I think punch and hit hard to this day, even with metal music broadly expanding its extremity in so many ways since the '70s.

Now, after this, things lighten up a bit musically and also thematically on "The Wizard". With its guitar licks and harmonica, it's very much pulling from a blues rock tradition. The song is filled with these thick and punchy riffs that are punctuated by Bill Ward's just relentless and super tight drum fills. And again, on its face, the storytelling and the lyrics on this track are a big contrast from the intro and are a lot lighter, and tell the story of this kick-ass wizard figure who's very much a good guy. He's spreading joy, he's striking fear into the hearts of demons. He's the wizard. He's a totally gnarly motherfucker who just has swag for days.

Now, in the OG sequencing to this album, we move into this multi-phased monster of a track that kicks off with this "Wasp" intro, also "Behind the Wall of Sleep", both of which come together into this sinister hard rock number with very sharp, soaring guitar leads and Ozzy's super poetic and morbid lyricism. And this trails off into Geezer Butler's basically bass solo/transition. And he is just rocking that thing, playing the hell out of it, just hitting those strings with his fingers so hard. They're hitting the neck really fiercely.

A lot of distortion on that tone, too, until he just breaks into the lead bass rift for "N.I.B.", a track that's long been considered to be titled "Nativity in Black". Though it's been confirmed, that is not actually the case, and you could pretty much just call the song Nib.

Either way, it's one of the band's most celebrated songs, and it's not hard to see why. It has one of the most iconic Tony Iommi solos for one, and it's handily the catchiest song on this record, too. Kind of like a more evil version of Cream, "Sunshine [of] Your Love" in a way, as Ozzy pretty much sings from the standpoint of Satan trying to love somebody. Yeah, pretty much a P.O.V. description of a Lucifer love song. It's so edgy.

On the very fast-paced and hard-hitting, "Wicked World", the evils on this track are less spiritual and more material, as we have descriptions of politicians sending people to war, disease, pestilence, fatherless children, women who are caught up in the rat race of living paycheck to paycheck in the working world. While the guitar work isn't quite as iconic as a song like "War Pigs", for example, you can see where the band is coming from with their writing and how tracks like this set the stage for songs like that a little later down the road.

Then to finish things off, we have this multi-phased monster 14-minute closer, which culminates into a super dark, hard rock/blues rock fusion moment about one of the scariest things ever, one of the scariest things in the history of all mankind – and that is unrequited love. No, but seriously, this is a very disturbing and downtrodden and depressing track. The thing that just has Ozzy going on this song is the idea that he is just in love with this person, infatuated with them, just completely obsessed to the point where he knows that his feelings in this situation are much stronger than the other person's is. He is just torn up over this to the point where even the idea of a dream of this person with another man is driving him mad. And this person eventually, rejecting him toward the end of the song, just has him completely distraught, which again, I think, says a lot about the feelings at the core of this album.

It's an interesting progression and juxtaposition that we begin the record off with Ozzy describing this hellish, scary, nightmarish figure, one that is not too unlike what we see on the cover of the album. Basically, just frightening him to death. Then by the end of the record, the thing that he is really truly infatuated with, to the point where he is being driven mad, is the idea of romantic rejection. You know, further proof that if a woman doesn't like you or isn't into you, you don't need to start a shitty podcast. You could just start one of the best metal bands of all time instead.

Okay, no, but really, just great guitar work and drumming on this track as well. And again, further contributing to just this darker streak in hard rock history. Again, really setting the table, getting the ball rolling for what we today know as metal music.

Because what Black Sabbath were doing at this this point, really was a few shades harder and darker than what other bands were doing at the time. And as much as we look back on albums like this, and metal music as being the force culturally that it is today, it's important to remember, it wouldn't really become the zeitgeist that it is until it started to really take off commercially in the '80s with so many bands starting to jump on the heavy metal trend and the speed metal trend, eventually thrash. When became more of a cultural force, too. This was also around when Ozzy started to go solo and drop records like Blizzard of Ozz, Diary of a Madman, Bark at the Moon, too.

Again, just to illustrate, as much as we go back and look at albums like this, and as widely culturally celebrated as they are today, it would take years and years for metal music to really build up the momentum that we know it to have currently.

So there you have it. Black Sabbath's debut album. I love it. I hope you do, too.

Anthony Fantano, Black Sabbath, Forever.