[ABlairican Pie]

Quite a while back, we had a look at the record catalog of the band Rush. We're now looking at the band that began heavy metal, the one and only Black Sabbath. We'll look at the band's 49-year career with their albums that influenced a generation, the good, the bad, the highs and lows (operative word: HIGH, which we'll get into), and material that is rather surprising.

The first album, the self-titled debut, 'Black Sabbath', released on February 13, 1970 (a Friday, which is significant), was recorded in twelve hours on a limited recording budget. The opening track, also called "Black Sabbath", is considered the first official heavy metal song, according to many critics. The tolling of the church bell in a thunderstorm, and the infamous tritone of the song's riff, which was known in medieval church music as Diabolus In Musica, or The Devil's Interval. The three notes were so jarring and unsettling, and a perfect introduction to the young band from Birmingham, England. These notes were also used in "Purple Haze" by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. The lyrics describe people being summoned by Satan for earthly pleasures in a Faustian bargain. An adequate way to describe the business of rock and roll.
The track ends with a climactic jump-blues outro. The song was so effective in the band's early pub days when they played it that everyone, including wait staff stood to watch the band play this unearthly song, and they got quite a reaction with Ozzy's howl.

The second song, "The Wizard", is the only song to feature Ozzy on harmonica. The lyrics are about a magical figure bringing happiness to people, perhaps he is a Christ figure, it is not clear. But the song appears to have influenced the song "Cities On Flame With Rock And Roll" by Blue Oyster Cult, America's alleged answer to Black Sabbath a few years later (which is another story altogether, in ten years).

"Wasp" and "Behind the Wall Of Sleep" incorporate a call-and-response technique in blues, where the vocals are followed by a guitar riff in succession. "Faces cupped within the flower" (guitar) "Deadly petals with strange power" (guitar), etc. And the riff is haunting and full of menace.
As Bill Ward's drums fade out, the bass solo by Geezer Butler ("Bassically") segues into one of the band's most notable songs, "N.I.B." The song is thought to have been named after an acronym meaning "Nativity In Black", as was the title of a Black Sabbath covers compilation in 1994, but it in fact is a reference to Bill Ward's beard resembling the nib of a pen. The band did something that was unheard of at the end of the 1960's: write a love song from the point of view of the Devil! "Your love for me has got to be real..." "My name is Lucifer, please take my hand." Such themes are rife within metal for decades, but in those days this was unthinkable. A far cry from The Beatles' "I Wanna Hold Your Hand".