Black Sabbath - "Symptom Of the Universe"

one of sabbath's greatest songs. pity the album as a whole is inconsistent with bizarre arrangements and forays into the orchestral offsetting the potency of the tunes on offer.

i have not heard Sabotage, but I really REALLY want to....Symptom is second only to Children of the Grave & Supernaut in my book (with Cornucopia right on its heels...man what a great band!)

Sabbath albums 5-8 are great BECAUSE they are inconsistent, mostly. Never SAy Die! is consistent though, and also great. But Sabotage is at least the best of these four.

Yeah, Sabotage's "inconsistency" = its basic weirdness, right?

I don't think they're even weird. It's more a matter of degrees. The first four Sabbath albums are, more or less, this atomic molecule that changed the weight of rock, but still, as much as I think the first four are vital and important, I got tired of them, so the looseness and variety of the next four Sabbath albums was really nice, even if they were made under less than ideal circumstances wrt the band on drugs, getting along, falling apart.

Never Say Die! is great, but in the grimmest way wrt the band. That album is the sound of a band trying to run the 10 meter dash, and just slowing down around meter 2 or so. It's (untentionally?) thematic in a sense. The quasi-random instrumental "Break Out" is a key track here. It's kinda like Sabbath's dirgey "L.A. Blues". Still the songs are very strong here.

There isn't a Sabbath album among the first 8 that sucks. Technical Ecstasy is the worst of the 8 only that it's merely good. It does have a handful of their worst songs of that era, though. ("Rock N Roll Doctor", "Gypsy" -- even though "Gypsy" has good parts in it.)

I like the first three Ozzy solo albums, but the best one is as good as Technical Ecstasy at best.

And I love "It's Alright". Go Bill!

You know what I mean by "weird": It's like they were listening to a lot of Queen or something.

Althought that's a real simplification.

Good post above, Mackro. I always thought the first half of Gypsy was great (fantastic riff), the second half some of the worst shit Sabbath has ever done.

Never Say Die is great.

..and Cheap Trick, and Thin Lizzy, and pretty much many 70s hard rock and/or poprock bands well established by then, yeah

if you see a 1978-era Sabbath show, you'll see Bill Ward invented the "crusty" look, easily.

(ok, fine, "crusty" is def. Bad Brains fashion worship. Bill Ward dreads just coincided.)

Never Say Die is great.

YES YES YES YES YES

there is some amazing stuff on NSD. do not listen to haters.

And I love "It's Alright". Go Bill!

― 909090909 Rivethed Brikkchin Reverk now DANZ (Mackro Mackro), Monday, January 19, 2009 11:40 AM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark

^this!

and i know it's just cover art. but just look at this and say this isn't fucking awesome

http://i18.tinypic.com/47xnegy.jpg

proto-Daft Punk fashion?

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

x-post -- I like how that and Technical were both Hipgnosis designs with blueprint style drawings on the inner art -- an (unintentional?) harbringer of a more tech-obsessed obsessed future in a way (somewhere in here is something that could be said involving the impact of Gary Numan on prog types and Rush's demi-reinvention as New Wave but I'm not Dave Q so I wouldn't be able to explain it as well).

the children of the never say die cover appeared on warning's albums:

http://i42.tinypic.com/11ht4as.jpg

"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.

^ you must have a defective copy where these tunes are reversed on the record, but correct on the cover.

lol

my "supernaut" allergy is well-established

edward...i am not rly qualified to explain the appeal of Vol. 4, but i'll give it my best:

"Supernaut": one of Bill Ward's finest moments. In a band where the "riff" has such supremacy, it's really great to hear a song that centers around the percussion, while also having a great riff to boot. Ward is allowed to set the pace from the beginning, and then Iommi comes in, only adding to the momentum with a very catchy guitar riff--not those huge pile-driving riffs built out of powerchords that Iommi specialized in, but just a nice, little, cyclical figure that manages to maintain the tonal quality of the Sabbath Guitar Sound. This propulsive gallop finally subsides into those crunchy, brutal verses, where Ward drums his fucking ass off, only to finish up, not with a chorus, but a return to the original drums/guitar figure, wihtout any cooling of the song's already-considerable momentum...in the middle of this, as if to emphasize that this is Ward's showcase, there is the tribal-sounding drum solo that is admittedly cribbed from the James Gang's "Funk #49". Nevertheless, the hypnotic momentum created in this song is not quite like anything else in the Sabbath catalogue, and group with "Snowblind" & "Cornucopia" (which you seem to already get) it forms the core of the Vol. 4 album, displaying a band that at their heights was about as powerful as rock music got, easily matching anything that came before or after...

I'll do some other songs here in a sec...

this song is so heavy and perfect

amen brothers.

have it on loud right now, just for the fucking sake of it.

January. And once more.

YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!

I haven't heard this in so long (dont' even know where my copy of Sabotage is). it is time to rectify that.

My 24 year old housemate just discovered all my Black Sabbath remasters so I've been hearing a lot of this lately. No complaints whatsoever.

Haha, nice Ned!

(throws goat at Ned... The horns, not the animal.)

Vol 4 is the best but this is a great record. Will play it in honor of Ned.

OH MY CHILD OF LOVE'S CREATION
COME AND STEP INSIDE MY DREAMMSSSS

don't even care if i got the lyrics wrong f off

Would like a reason to drive for a week with this and the first Lucifer's Friend album as the soundtrack.

"Symptom..." is a truly pummeling song, and is actually improved upon by the funky acoustic jam at the end. When the band comes in right after the initial guitar riff, it sounds like they were shot out of a cannon.

Stick around for megalomania cuz it is also awesome.
SUCK ME

Megalomania is so great! Aww man I love that song, it's kinda ridiculous but it pulls it off.

It's that time of the year!

Why thank you for the prompt!

YEAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

This is one of my favourite Sabbath songs ever! Ward sounds as if he's about to destroy his drum kit, Ozzy sounds incredibly pissed off and superb riffage throughout. Sabotage remains an underrated piece of work, but some days it's my favourite Sabbath LP.

Great song, though for a while I was irritated by the end where it gets all groovy/hippified.
― Ian John50n (orion)

OMFG I love this part! I used to play bass many incarnations ago and I always got frustrated when covering this in one of the bands I played with, because we never played the acoustic hippie funk coda. Balearic Sabbath is great and I wont hear otherwise.

all my Black Sabbath remasters

o this has been? my copy sounds like shit compared to the others

Ditto Moka
And that “day in the life” style transition from heavy to groovy

Mellow Sabbath is some of the best Sabbath
There are worse ways to pass the late afternoon than to put “solitude” on repeat

"we sail through endless skies" my mellow sabbath album

https://open.spotify.com/user/matthelgeson/playlist/6KAiYTobROEmgOk0uDMQJh

Veddy nice

I still give that one a spin every now and then!
(xpost)

A month late for the usual revive but

YEAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

*air drums*

Valentine's Day="Symptom of the Universe, A LOVE THAT NEVER DIES!!!"

Fan made doc on Sabotage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH8c4TKrIOo

Oh that’s right it’s January!

YEAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

That was actually quite informative about the band's management troubles, and explaining the cover. I don't hear any Mellotron on "Supertzar", though, just on "Megalomania".

Nice to see you Ned!