Best Black Sabbath Album

so is this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUkwv5yZyhA

Yeah I am really into the new record. Favorite track at the moment is still Follow the Tears. I will assuredly spin that at my Dj gig tonight. The 3-sided LP is gorgeous.

god, "Follow the Tears" is such a monster track ... really dig the bridge part, where Dio goes into "We'll be there for you / I believed and I can tell you it's not true" ... it sounds floaty and psychedelic dropped into the middle of this amazing doom track

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ7EBF6IQn4

"Atom and Evil" and "Bible Black" are so good too

sabbath bloody sabbath title track 3:20--4:50 best 90 seconds of metal ever recorded

" I haven't heard the stuff between Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and the Dio albums. "

Forget what you have heard and listen to this stuff because it's great.

Too bad you feel that way about Wheels of Confusion, Duke, that's one of their best songs ever. Sounds like the fucking apocolypse on that "Lost in the Wheeels...." part.

ou-ou-ou-ou, not enuff sabotage luv-uv-uv-uv in them poll results i don't think.

I haven't heard the stuff between Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and the Dio albums.

that includes sabotage! rectify! rectify!

Sabotage is placed about right in that poll.

Sabotage's about three places lower than it should be, I'd say.

And so's Bloody Sabbath.

My personal poll of Ozzy era albums:

1) Master of Reality
2) Vol. 4
3) Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
4) Never Say Die (yes, really)
5) Sabotage
6) Black Sabbath
7) Paranoid (Yes, really)
8) Technical Ecstasy

feel free to print that out and toss darts at it.

mine would be:

black sabbath

sabotage

master of reality

paranoid

sabbath bloody sabbath

never say die

vol. 4

technical ecstacy

The four stabs / punches of guitar on "The Wizard" as Ozzy sings "never talking, just keeps walking" are fantastic.

Black Sabbath
Master of Reality
Volume IV
Sabotage
Paranoid
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
Never Say Die
Technical Ecstacy

But god I love them all so much.

dudes, how great is this 'Never Say Die' clip ..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvVwiE2U9_g

like, the band is so on fire you can hardly believe they would be on the verge of breaking up. Why break up when you can rock this hard?

(also, love Bill's neckbeard and dreads, he looks like some total refugee from No Neck Blues Band or something)

ok, maybe Ozzy was a *little* drunk .... but the performance still holds together quite nicely

Ive seen other songs from this particular show, the band is on, but Ozzy has some issues with his voice. Especially on Symptom on the Universe.

IV winning seems challopsy to me in retrospect

― d20 riot tard (M@tt He1ges0n),

that comment seems challopsy

100% with you on this one, Kerr.

Agreed.

yeah, may not be everybody's first choice ('tis mine), but to imply that so choosing is some kinda wilful warped contrarianism is just dopey.

maybe it's just cuz my vinyl copy of IV is so scratched and thin-sounding, but voting it as the best over what came before is kinda mystifying to me

Pick up one of the numerous remastered versions, you won't be sorry. The groove on Tommmorow's Dream feels like your brain is slowly being melted from within.

Challops would be picking Tyr as the best, not Vol. IV. Also this is crap: "None of them, I don't like Black Sabbath"

Herm, is the thread starter you? Is that an old handle?

yeah tis me, i think that was my 2nd or 3rd handle

usually some variation of pfunboy,the jokey krautrock name came much later, but i ended up sticking with it when i forgot my old pw

i hope master of reality gets voted alltime heaviest album.

as do I, sir. that was my vote.

that would be great, a poll on heaviest ever album, do it bill magill!

im assuming that he meant the poll that you're currently conducting, Herm. I dont have the patience, the time or the technical skills to run a poll, plus my efforts would probably pale in comparison to yours.

i dont mean an email poll, just do an ordinary ILM poll. Ask for nominations on a thread , then poll them.

i'm not gonna say voting for 4 is challopsy because I like paranoid even less than 4, which sounds pretty challopsy. Probably would vote for Master Of Reality and SBS (maybe even the first) over them.

I dont think not voting for Paranoid is challopsy, its just that those are the only songs you really hear on radio and/or everybody knows. So you almost get sick of them. Still, it has Hand of Doom that gets no airplay, but is awesome.

Yeah it's not worthless, but between "Iron Man" (only Sabbath hit I'm truly tired of) and some draggier moments its not remotely my platter of choice.

I rank them thusly (not that anyone particularly cares):

Black Sabbath > Master of Reality > Sabbath Bloody Sabbath > Volume IV > Paranoid = Sabotage > Never Say Die > Technical Ecstacy

The first one still amazes me on a regular basis and I think gets a bit overlooked.

Is it worth checking out Die and TE? Don't expect them to hold up to the others but are they at least interesting?

I think so. They're pretty decent late 70s hard rock records, but they do pale when compared to what the band did before.

I personally love Never Say Die, and voted it top 10 in Herm's poll. There is a great thread about it on ILM. Check the thread out and you will be buying/downloading it immediately after reading it.

Here it is:

Black Sabbath - Never Say Die!

Only 3 people who voted have heard Heaven & Hell?

in the "Paranoid" riff, there seems to be an errant major key note that pops up at the end of the chorus riff. wtf is that? it's been bugging me for fucking years

You really can't go wrong with Sabbath all the way through Live Evil.

"If you listen to fools the Mob Rules"

Just listening to Vol.4 now. I love it, but there is an inconsistency in sound on the album that annoys me. Different bits of tape being spliced together, I don't know. The volume of the album fluctuates badly. This makes it feel cobbled together in a bad way. I'm listening to the recent remastered CD. Is there a more balanced edition of this album??

That later era of the Ozzy Black Sabbath is kinda 'why spend money on a producer when we can spend it on drugs'. Page took producer rights on the Led Zep records, but he usually had a ringer working the board in all of their records that was killer producer in their own right like Glyn Johns, Andy Johns, Eddie Kramer, Ron Nevison etc. working on the record.

I think a big 'What If' moment of 70s/80s heavy metal is what would have happened if Martin Birch would have produced Born Again. I think if that record had the same production as the two Dio albums, it might have been a bigger hit and the Gillian era perhaps would have had a second act.

To me, I think Martin Birch probably was the best producer/engineer of all the early hard rock and metal.

this is totally Master of Reality btw

well, yeah

I feel like MoR is the album that probably most influenced the copycat stoner acts, as the template is mostly fully formed on that one. though some days the s/t is my fav - I've been known to rock "The Wizard" at karaoke night

probably most influenced the copycat stoner acts, as the template is mostly fully formed on that one.

also it's the first album where tony and geezer downtuned their axes, according to tony's autobio