![]() ![]() Although nearly two decades had passed since the end of World War II, the city was still deep in the redevelopment that followed the years-long Birmingham Blitz. They had each come from humble backgrounds and grown up in the Aston neighborhood of Birmingham (which Iommi has likened to Detroit) the guitarist and Osbourne had even attended the same school. Butler was only 19, and the rest were all 20. The members of Black Sabbath were a group of fresh-faced young men when they first played together in the summer of 1968 in Birmingham, following stints in other bands. “Without them, the genre may never have come to be.” “There is no doubt in my mind that Sabbath invented what we know as the start of true and pure heavy metal,” Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford says. So to mark the 50-year anniversary of the group’s paradigm-shifting album, Black Sabbath’s members, collaborators, peers, admirers, and the acts they covered have all taken a moment to reflect here for a thorough accounting of how the group came to define the metal genre. ![]() But a half-century ago, they were the furthest thing from legends, just four scrappy roughnecks from Birmingham, England, playing the blues. These days, the band’s status as the progenitors of heavy metal is practically undisputed. If a Martian were to land on Earth and ask, “What is heavy metal?” the best answer would be to play “Black Sabbath.”īut because so much music has drawn inspiration from Black Sabbath, it’s difficult to imagine how the band started, where its members came from, why they sounded so morbid. Yet on its own, Black Sabbath still sounds unique. The echoes of the macabre imagery, powerful guitar riffs, and athletic drumming on Black Sabbath haven’t just rippled through the music of bands like Slipknot, Rage Against the Machine, and Pantera they’ve also made their way into punk, indie rock, and even hip-hop. These bands might have existed (Judas Priest did exist at the time of Sabbath’s debut), but it’s hard to imagine that any of it would have sounded the same. Without Black Sabbath, Metallica wouldn’t have had the blueprint to write “Enter Sandman.” Judas Priest might never have broken the law, Iron Maiden wouldn’t have run to the hills, and Slayer would have never reigned in blood. Now, with 50 years’ worth of hindsight, you can hear that the album represented the start of a new epoch. The album sleeve depicted a witchy-looking woman holding a black cat in a supernatural world, and the music inside delivered on the cover’s mysteriousness. record stores in February 1970 - on a Friday the 13th to capitalize on the album’s unsettling look and sound - it showed the world what “heavy” really meant. When their debut album, Black Sabbath, hit U.K. The six-minute horror vignette was spooky yet thrilling, and the song, “Black Sabbath,” would serve as the prototype for a genre poised to captivate the world.Īrtists like Jimi Hendrix, Cream, and Led Zeppelin had spent the late Sixties edging into darker, denser terrain, but it was Black Sabbath who made heavy a way of life. “Is this the end, my friend?” he wonders aloud. The guitar chords lurch seismically, each one like a gut punch before quieting down just enough for Ozzy Osbourne to paint his own vivid portrait of fear - “What is this that stands before me/Figure in black which points at me?” It’s a scene so unnerving that he eventually pleads to the heavens, “Oh, no, NO, please God help me,” before the guitar riff and church bells come around again to strike him down. The song opens with the sound of a powerful thunderstorm and ominous church chimes before crashing into its lumbering, iconic riff. ![]() Half a century has passed since Black Sabbath first scared the bejesus out of rock fans with their eponymous anthem. ![]()
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