BLACK SABBATH Sabbath Bloody Sabbath CD (1973)

By 1973, Black Sabbath had already invented heavy metal twice over. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath was where they proved they could do something even harder than being heavy, they could be heavy and strange. Ozzy's vocals float over passages that shouldn't work but absolutely do, Iommi hits riffs so thick they leave bruises, and the whole record sits in this uneasy space between doom and something almost psychedelic.

This is the album that showed the Birmingham four weren't just grinding out sludge. There are mellotrons on here. There are orchestral arrangements. There's a track called Fluff that sounds like it wandered in from a completely different dimension. None of it should cohere, and all of it does, because when Tony Iommi writes a riff it bends reality around it. If you've only come to Sabbath through the first two records, this one will rearrange your understanding of what dark aesthetic can mean in heavy music.

CD pressing. Full length studio album, originally released 1973. UK origin. Doom metal, heavy metal, proto-metal. Running order: Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, A National Acrobat, Fluff, Sabbra Cadabra, Killing Yourself to Live, Who Are You, Looking for Today, Spiral Architect.

Fans of: Judas Priest, Dio, Motörhead.