Black Sabbath

Heavy Metal. I believe the lineage is pretty much Iron Butterfly's Heavy, Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild," Randy Holden's held up Population II, and then the official first publication of tonight's album, Black Sabbath. It sits comfortably on a bunch of great lists: self-titled debut, records recorded in a day (mixing on day 2), set list albums, albums that start with rainstorms and/or church bells, probably more. 

Is the title track the primordial ooze from which Doom Metal lurched into existence? I dunno, but my goodness is it chock full of goodness, so we'll roll with it. 

Is it really all that and a bag of chips? Yes. It's raw, it's awkward, Iommi's double-tracked solos sword fight each other through your brain matter, Geezer's bass sounds like an absolutely disgusting monster that crawled out of a tar pit to mumble at you, Ozzy sounds more like Ozzy than you even remember, they torture a rusty harmonica, it is glorious. 

But perhaps more importantly, i think you can still hear how new and exciting and uncompromisingly critical of the horrors of the modern world it is even today. It's vibrantly gut wrenching, and completely unafraid of letting all the demons out to play. 

It's also interesting to note how different people interpret the "satanic imagery." For the band and the album, it's a metaphor. The world at the time was "satanic." Us americans, of course, received it through the coffee filter of Anton Lavey, the Church of Satan guy. I'm sure you will not be at all surprised to learn that i've read The Satanic Bible, and worshipping Satan isn't the point at all. The point of Laveyan Satanism is complete personal intellectual and physical freedom, no matter what form that takes. Theoretically, intentionally choosing to adhere to a life of Abstinent Catholicism is a completely lovely Satanic practice in its own right. It's a psychology of intention rather than obedience, and hedonism only works if you're actually a hedonist. The band was just trying to really drive home how horrible the Vietnam War was. 

What this album really is is Blues Rock cranked up to 11 played by people who knew exactly how much they hated Birmingham, and led by a guitarist who actually had his fingertips chopped of in a sheet metal accident when he was 17. That's certainly a perspective.