Black Sabbath

It’s hard to quantify Black Sabbath’s impact on heavy metal, because without Black Sabbath, there would be no such thing as heavy metal. Theirs was a logical continuation of the increasingly heavy sounds that came before, from Wagner to The Beatles and Deep Purple to Steppenwolf, but it took a perfect storm of Birmingham’s working class gloom, Tony Iommi’s mangled fingers, inner demons both real and imagined, and the nascent menace of Thatcherism waiting in the wings to first coax true heavy metal thunder down from the lofty realm of the gods and into this mortal coil.

Sabbath’s strongest albums were arguably released between 1970 and 1979. Their later material had its moments, but nearly any recording pales next to the untouchable quality of their first four records. The band formed as Earth in 1968, quickly shedding its blues rock origins and that first stab at a name to harness the otherworldly power of Iommi’s riffs. At age seventeen, Tony had lost the tips of two fingers to an industrial accident on his last day or work at a Birmingham sheet metal factory. Instead of giving up, he fashioned himself some plastic “fingertips” out of old thimbles, pressed down heavier on his strings, and inadvertently launched a genre. His blues-based riffs exploited the minor keys’ inherent darkness and a treble-boosting effects pedal slapped heavy distortion on the down-tuned notes. It sounded bigger, heavier, and darker than anything else rock music had managed up until that point; even pioneering Satanic psych rock outfit Coven trod on the lighter side of heavy, and they were far deeper into the occult than Black Sabbath delved even at their witchiest. Doom metal owes its entire existence to that rumbling roar, and the blueprints for so many other styles and genres come smeared by plastic fingertips. Ozzy Osbourne’s quivering wail sounded desperate and uncertain as he sang of wizards, women, and weed; he touched upon the evil that men do, on dirty politics and dreadful wars and the horrors of addiction. Snowblind and flying high, Sabbath rode the crazy train straight on through to the other side of the Seventies, through the Dio-fueled Eighties, in and out of breakups and hiatuses and headlong into the Nineties, when things really got weird.

A revolving lineup, errant singers (including a long stint with Tony Martin, who was later given a bloody raw deal by the band when they tried to effectively erase him from its history) , and drug-addled confusion left Black Sabbath weakened, and the dawn of the 2000s saw even more mayhem unfold when Ozzy found unexpected success as a reality TV star and the band fractured into multiple camps. The return of Ronnie James Dio injected vital new blood into Sabbath’s aging veins under the guise of Heaven & Hell, reviving interest in the band’s back catalogue and perhaps giving the ol’ boys from Brum a much needed kick up the arse in the process. Dio’s place in the Black Sabbath saga is unshakable, but when the man – the legend – met left us in 2010 on his ultimate earthly departure, the future looked bleaker than ever for Ward, Butler, Iommi, and even Osbourne. When Black Sabbath came together once more with its original lineup and promised to record anew, it seemed too good to be true. As any proud owner of a “Bill Sabbath” shirt will tell ya, it was, but we still got a decent record out of the semi-legitimate current lineup (joined by new drummer Brad Wilk). Rumor has it the band is plotting a twentieth (!) full length and final world tour, but given Iommi’s current medical condition, only time will tell on that front.

Now, given the shifting nature of the band’s lineup, it’s not entirely fair of me to question this version’s legitimacy, but my reasoning is more sentimental than spiteful. Like so many others I fell in love with the Black Sabbath my dad introduced me to when I was young – with the immortal Ward, Butler, Iommi, Osbourne lineup. That’s what struck the loudest chord. In all honesty, that’s the only era I still listen to (apologies to Dio) but there is so much of merit in their considerable discography that there really is something for everyone.

So, why is Black Sabbath one of the most important metal bands of all time? If it weren’t for them, none of us would be here. For that at the very least, to say nothing of their incredible music, they deserve our veneration.

No Sabbath, no metal. Period.