Black Sabbath “Black Sabbath” released 50 years ago today, February 13th, 1970. So I guess Happy 50th, Heavy Metal! (This is, of course, debatable but Black Sabbath is widely recognized as the first metal album and its title track “Black Sabbath” the first doom metal song. Also – yes, I know this isn’t an original LP from 1970 so no need to tell me 🙄) Black Sabbath went to #8 in the UK and #23 in the US, showing that a lot of youth were pretty sick of the happy-hippie flower power days of the 60′s and looking for something much, much darker. While the album incorporates a lot of rock-n-roll blues riffs and sounds (ie the blues harmonica, played by Ozzy Osbourne, in “The Wizard” – Cream was a big influence on Butler in particular) and elements of psychedelia and Tolkien-esque themes (guitarist Tony Iommi was in Jethro Tull for a bit; “The Wizard” is inspired by Gandalf) popular in the 60′s, Black Sabbath took those elements and twisted them into something dark and menacing with Iommi’s unique guitar playing (literally metal on metal) and punctuated with Geezer’s bass playing which he explains saying, “Back then the bass player was supposed to do all these melodic runs, but I didn’t know how to do that because I’d been a guitarist, so all I did was follow Tony’s riff. That made the sound heavier.“ Our copy is the US release which differs from the UK version: the US B-side has “Wicked World” and “A Bit of Finger/ Sleeping Village/ Warning” while the UK’s B-side has a cover of “Evil Woman” (originally by Crow), “Sleeping Village” and “Warning” (originally by Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation). (reblog of myself from July 2019)