Best Black Sabbath Album

man i have no idea what i voted originally (prob Master, if i even voted), but the answer has got to be Sabotage. SABOTAGE!

shame about that cover tho

but i need to hear SBS again. it's the only one of the first 6 i don't own.

Do it, you won't be sorry

Volume 4 might be one of the best albums ever. By anybody. That sh1t stands tall!

As far as favourite song...I "Supernaut" is the obv. choice but every time I go for it, a bunch of other songs pop in my mind..."Planet Caravan", "Cornucopia", "Sympton of the Universe", "Snowblind", "Fairies Wear Boots", "Children of the Grave", "St. Vitus Dance", "War Pigs". "Sweet Leaf", "It's Alright"...even "Changes" is ace; the last song played on Prom Night at Werewolf High School...

"The Wizard", "N.I.B.", "Electric Funeral", "Into the Void", "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath"...I can't stop...

one song I haven't heard, off of Sabotage, is called Megalomania...I heard it was killer...anybody out there know & like it???

no live evil???

one song I haven't heard, off of Sabotage, is called Megalomania...I heard it was killer...anybody out there know & like it???

it's morose but awesome. starts off slow and kinda ballad-y and then kicks in with a monster iommi riff. some strings but not dripping with them.

Paranoid's probably the best but Master of Reality is the most consistent, IMO.

poor sabbath bloody sabbath beaten by black sabbath haters

anyway, a loads of Sabbath albums are on Spotify now should anyone be interested.

IV winning seems challopsy to me in retrospect

i dont see why, IV has always been seen as the best album, here in the UK at least.

Especially in magazines like Kerrang in the late 80s through the 90s.

huh wow i didn't know that it was that canon in the UK...in the US it seems like paranoid is by far the one, followed by master of reality

i think this was the thread where i did the math and realized that sabotage is my favorite sabbath.

ususally.

all the mags I read had Vol IV as the album. Don't know how it's viewed now.
xp

I made a quantitative argument on some sabbath thread that sabotage >>>> vol 4

my mate would agree

Maybe someone should do a best sabbath album that wasn't ozzy or dio

Born Again would smoke that poll

oh, here's my vol 4 vs. sabotage breakdown from Black Sabbath - "Symptom Of the Universe"

weird, I was listening to sabotage non-stop over the holidays and decided my favorite sabbath albums are paranoid, master of reality, and sabotage.

this poll had me listening to vol 4 again like mad, but after all these years I still don't get the love for that album. you wanna talk about inconsistency?

"wheels of confusion" - yawn
"tomorrow's dream" - ok
"changes" - awesome mellotron but if you're a third of the way through yr sabbath album and the best song so far is a ballad there is a problem
"fx" - oh wait you are right this album rocks!
"supernaut" - don't get it. not a bad a song, definitely a good one. but I'm clearly not feeling it the way others are.
"snowblind" - now this is a great song!
"cornucopia" - another great song!
"laguna sunrise" - love the iommi mellow instrumentals. this isn't better than "orchid" but it's pretty damn good. wow, maybe this album is turning around!
"st vitus dance" - nope. note to sabbath: you are not the allman bros.
"under the sun" - can't even remember what this one sounds like. I think it's good + doomy? I'm too wracked with disappointment to pay attention.

compare with sabotage:
"hole in the sky" - great song, and love the way they start with the noise of fiddling and getting ready to start, it's like this is a BAND
"don't start (too late)" - it's filler but it's so short who cares
"symptom of the universe" - omfg OMFG
"megalomania" - okay at this point I've got almost 20 minutes of riff perfection, why you no like this album?
"the thrill of it all" - a good-not-great song, but that's all I need to keep my high going at this point
"supertzar" - kind of dopey but kind of cool in that wtf-is-sabbath-doing-now way
"am I going insane?" - underrated song, also like how they bury the pop tune in the back of the album
"the writ" - the only problem with this song is that it can't support an 8 minute runtime, gets draggy but starts out great especially if it's cranked

― Edward III, Monday, January 19, 2009 12:28 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark

Best Non Ozzy/Dio Black Sabbath Studio Album

Good try, but you stumble out of the gates on the Volume 4 rundown. Wheels of Confusion is an absolute monster. Plus the Supernaut thing kills me.

and how can you not love Tomorrow's Dream?

^yeah, I actually had a hard time wrapping my mind around this myself.

as far as IV being the best, I totally agree...challops?

IV > Paranoid: this is kind of hard to justify, except the fact that Paranoid was the first Sabbath album I ever bought, and I liked it, but I was already v. familiar with half the songs, and the other half didn't really jump out at me, giving me a first impression of the album as suffocating and monochromatic...I mean, there's songs on it I love...Planet Caravan, Fairies Wear Boots, Paranoid, War Pigs, and even the songs that didn't really stick with me are hard to argue against, like the opening to Electric Funeral, but put it all together, and...I don't know, just seems a bit too monolithic to me I guess...

IV > Master of Reality: A bit easier, there's like four songs on this album, and only Children of the Grave (the best thing Sabbath ever did) shits on the stuff on IV from anything resembling a great height...I mean the album gets a little closer once I realized that After Forever was the earlier superior original article, and St. Vitus Dance was the rewrite, but still...I'm not exactly sure which three songs are stronger: Sweet Leaf/Children/Into the Void or Supernaut/Snowblind/Cornucopia, but it doesn't matter; without these IV is still within striking distance of a sprwaling druggy masterpiece...

these = its three songs

I find it strange that vol IV isnt the canon album for you guys.

worth running this poll again?

"I find it strange that vol IV isnt the canon album for you guys."

I don't understand this at all. It's a great album, and for me has Sabbath's best song, but if you're looking at the so called "canon", at least in the US, it's undoubtedly Paranoid. I've obviously gone on ad nauseum about how I think Master of Reality is the best. Incidentally, the guys in Sabbath themselves would vote for SBS for what it's worth.

Me, I usually rely on RYM to give me some kind of indicator of an album's canonical status:

http://rateyourmusic.com/artist/black_sabbath

Paranoid leads the way in ratings, reviews and overall score. Not that that's anywhere near definitive, of course.

http://www.foreverdoomed.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=9621 what DFFD votes

I've just picked up Sabotage after years of meaning to buy it, but being put off by the cover and an unsubstantiated notion that it is a sub-par Sabbath album. And it's great. The only poor song is Supertzar.

Now I need to persuade myself to get Heaven and Hell..

how dare you? supertzar's amazing, and the best song on that album...

Heaven and Hell is awesome! Might as well go ahead and pick up The Mob Rules too. I can't believe how much I've fallen for that Dio area, great stuff.

mob rules is fuckin RUTHLESS

"...and an unsubstantiated notion that it is a sub-par Sabbath album."

I've never been aware of this "notion".

Yeah, Mob Rules fucking kills, you gotta get that.

i know loads of people who say Sabotage is their fave album.

I've never been aware of this "notion"

That's because it was my own notion. And, as I say, unsubstantiated. I dunno, maybe it's the cover alone, maybe it's my poor memory of listening to this album at friends' places as a kid -- I just got it into my head that Sabotage was a bit of a clanger. Wrong I was.

Thanks for the Mob Rules recommendation. Will give it a listen.

I'll admit the cover of Sabotage is hilariously bad. A bone-headed idea ruined by terrible execution.

yeah, it's the worst from a series of truly bizarre covers.

I will get behind any of the ozzy/dio era studio albums, personally. was recently blown away by how much I liked never say die, for example.