We all know that the first four Black Sabbath albums should be required listening for every man woman and child on earth. That's a self-evident truth. But what about the others? Mid-period Sabbath is often criminally overlooked due to the drug-fueled excess, legal wrangling and just plain bad ideas that plagued the band from 1973-1975. As much as the band's personal lives may have been falling apart at the time, there was still enough left in the tank to produce two great albums in Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath and Sabotage that are only disappointing if held to the impossibly high standard the band had already set for itself during the incomparable main sequence of Black Sabbath, Paranoid, Master Of Reality and Volume 4. Until 1976, it was never a lack of good material that hampered the band, but rather an abundance of half-baked ideas and poor decisions. The torrid pace with which the earlier material was cut compared to the 2 year layover between Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Sabaotage suggest not only that the ideas may have been slower in coming but also that they were more heavily laboured upon when they arrived. At that point in their career a very successful band, Sabbath was given access to studio time and equipment that had previously been unavailable, and the temptation to make use of it caused a shift in their sound towards something denser and more progressive. Not that this was necessarily a bad thing, as such studio flourishes like Geezer's nifty overdriven echo-wah bass on "The Writ" or the acoustic coda to "Symptom Of The Universe" make clear, but the case I'm making with this here riff sandwich is that Sabbath could still move mountains when they just locked in and did what they did best. Hey, no one's done torpid, doomy drug rock better than these guys before or since, so why not listen to some of their lesser-beloved material with a fresh set of ears?
Side A
Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath
Symptom Of The Universe
Killing Yourself To Live
Megalomania
Side B
Hole In The Sky
Sabba Cadabra
A National Acrobat
The Writ
How's that for a smokin' platter of rock n' roll? No "Fluff," "Who Are You," or "Superczar," just slow, heavy riffs and titanic drums with everyone's favorite acid-blasted hippy pleading for peace and love. And really, isn't that all you ever wanted?
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ReplyDeleteI hold both Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Sabotage in the highest regard. I think they are both musically and lyrically superb. For me, it was only the slow unraveling during Technical Ecstasy and the shockingly awful, almost amateurish outing of Never Say Die that disappoints
ReplyDeleteThe impetus for this post is a tendency I've noticed for younger fans to overlook the middle period at the expense of the early stuff. I figure a proper distillation of those albums into a concise two-fer might be enough to show these dilettantes the error of their ways. Truth be told, I've consciously avoided Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die for a long time. I am happy to say that I now have no recollection of the music on them whatsoever.
ReplyDeleteHow do you feel about the early 80's stuff? I'm glad they toured as Heaven & Hell and not Black Sabbath in the last few years, because while I do think they made some great music with Dio, it just wasn't Black Sabbath to me. I also happen to have a soft spot for Born Again with Ian Gilliam.
It's a great post and a worthy one because you are right about the tendency by some to concentrate on Paranoid and the early impact.
ReplyDeleteActually Technical Ecstasy has a rather good track in Dirty Women if only for the guitar work out.
I am a big big fan of Dio era Sabs, I was too young to catch the classic Sabs era live so Dio was all I knew on stage and they never disappointed...I also saw Gillan front Sabbath, the much maligned Born Again album is underrated in my view.
The 80's stuff is definitely of its time, and excellent on its own terms. I tend to lump the Dio stuff (and Born Again) in with a lot of the NWOBHM records coming out. It's just more like straight up heavy metal. Great stuff, but for different reasons.
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