Label: Vertigo Records
Release date: September 18, 1970
Producer: Rodger Bain
Album length: 42.07 min
Genre: Heavy Metal
Rating: 10 / 10
Black Sabbath, the legendary heavy metal pioneers from Birmingham, earned cult status as musical innovators in a relatively short time after forming and taking their early, blues-tinged steps. Their ambiently gloomy debut, steeped in occult lyrics, was one of the first heralds of a new rock subgenre, defined by the noisy, one-of-a-kind guitar sound from the fingers of Tony Iommi, master of innovative tricks, the melodic bass lines of Terry ‘Geezer’ Butler, the massive yet dynamic drumming of Bill Ward, an all-pervading dark atmosphere and anything-but-idealistic lyrics delivered by the technically limited but otherwise hugely charismatic singer Ozzy Osbourne. It had already made clear this was one of the most gifted bands around, built from a very special caliber. You could say the cult foursome, with their dark visions and occult ‘outbursts’, were among the first musical heralds of the spirit of a new era, i.e. the noticeably more somber, inflation-scarred seventies, compared with the generally idealistic and almost naively cheerful sixties.
“Paranoid”, their second album, was originally supposed to be called “War Pigs”. But the ‘bright sparks’ at Vertigo had the final say. They figured the original title might hurt the feelings of supporters (read: hawks) of the still-smoldering Vietnam War, and they were also convinced the album would sell better if it were named after the famous lead single. “Paranoid” is one of the most important achievements of heavy metal pioneering and is stuffed with plenty of Sabbath classics that every die-hard metalhead can recite from memory, especially at midnight. Some of them, led by the title track, “War Pigs” and “Iron Man”, are the most recognizable creations of their entire career, known today even to plenty of casual hard rock listeners, and over the decades they’ve racked up a whole pile of covers of all kinds.
Compared with its predecessor, which had its share of almost pretentious improvising and where the blues pulse of most songs was still clearly noticeable, the individual tracks on the much tougher “Paranoid” got a clear focus, or what you’d call ‘a head and a tail’. The ‘sinister’ occultism of most of Geezer’s lyrics took a back seat this time, making room for social criticism, led by pacifism, and for science fiction. That’s obvious from the bizarre cover with the ‘cop’, a paranoid patron of a special kind in his underpants, with a plastic katana and a cardboard shield. Its absurdity stems from the simple fact that, in that form, it was meant for the original title, “War Pigs”, but then labels are known for their senseless moves.
Almost all the songs on the album, with a few exceptions, are recognized as classics by plenty of hard rock fans today. The opening pacifist manifesto “War Pigs”, the central part of a two-piece suite together with “Luke’s Wall”, was written as a critique of the Vietnam War and later became one of the most beloved anti-war rock standards. It ranks among the best achievements of the band’s entire career. It opens with a grim guitar riff and the wail of air-raid sirens. Ozzy practically declaims the accusing words, which are fired like a knife into the well-fed bellies of crowned heads and the robe-and-tie-adorned necks of society’s ‘elite’. Iommi’s greasy guitar phrase cuts ruthlessly through Geezer’s jagged bass lines, while Ward’s stormy drum hooks keep the atmosphere as uncompromising as it gets. With witty guitar passages and delicious soloing in the middle of the melodic closing section of “Luke’s Wall”, Iommi once again proves himself a grand master of guitar innovation. Smack in the middle of the US, this timeless Sabbath evergreen was even banned from the airwaves after 9/11, put on the ‘blacklist’ of Bush’s Ministry of ‘Truth’, which says plenty about how politically incorrect it was. Interestingly, this evergreen was originally called “Walpurgis” and had a thoroughly occult lyric about a witches’ sabbath, but they had to swap the whole thing for a pacifist theme because the label found the original version somehow too ‘satanic’.
The title track is the best-known Sabbath classic of them all. With its fairly simple structure, instant accessibility and melodic hooks, it lodged itself in the hearts of all heavy rock fans in a heartbeat. The secret of its success lies in a tempo that’s markedly sped up by usual Sabbath standards, mostly thanks to the rattling bass lines, which are fused with a white-hot guitar riff and massive drum swings, while Ozzy shines in the role of a paranoid maniac. As is often the case with big hits and timeless standards, “Paranoid” came together practically at the ‘last minute’ at the label’s request for a representative single. The experimental, almost space rock “Planet Caravan” is the most psychedelic creation of their career, with Ozzy singing through a vocoder, which, together with a dynamic backing of percussion and restrained acoustic guitar chords, creates a ‘tripped-out’, slightly futuristic vibe. The lyrics are about a random individual floating through space together with their partner.
“Iron Man” is another hugely popular classic, marked first and foremost by a distorted, smeared and brutal-sounding guitar riff, one of the most famous of Iommi’s entire career, which laid the foundations for numerous future metal guitar standards. In recent years “Iron Man” has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity even with a brand-new generation of listeners, thanks to the movie of the same name about the Marvel superhero of the same name, since it played over the end credits of the first film in 2008. That makes it all the more ironic that Geezer’s sci-fi lyrics have nothing to do with the popular comic book hero. Instead, Ozzy sings about a character who travels through time and lands in an apocalyptic future. Horrified by humanity’s downfall, he tries to return to his own time and bring back a warning about the catastrophe, but on the way back he hits a magnetic field that turns him into a man of metal. The process also leaves him mute, which means he can’t warn anyone about the vision of a dark future. Enraged by his grotesque appearance and his inability to communicate verbally, he conspires against humanity and starts using his new powers to destroy everything around him. In a twist of fate’s irony, he ends up becoming the main cause of the catastrophic future he once witnessed.
The chilling “Electric Funeral”, another full-blooded ‘doom & gloom’ Sabbath classic straight out of a nightmare, is by atmosphere alone undoubtedly the darkest and most fatalistic piece on the album. The lyrics once again touch on the aftermath of all-out nuclear war and the bleakness of a post-apocalyptic future, where only a handful of grotesque mutants scrape by among the survivors. The slow tempo with its rolling guitar riff, snarling bass lines and Ozzy’s thoroughly wicked singing are the main ingredients of this gloomy prototype of doom metal. The brief swerve into faster rhythmic waters plays almost like a decoy maneuver, a weak ray of optimism in the middle of total darkness, and it soon gives way to the complete triumph of the fatalistic main motif. Black Sabbath were already great musical experimentalists at the start of their career, which the dystopian wrecker “Hand of Doom” demonstrates vividly once more. It’s another pacifist manifesto in the vein of “War Pigs”, with its many sudden tempo shifts and dynamic bluesy guitar finesse, in which you can feel the roots of this legendary band. Ozzy once again sings as if he were in the middle of a merciless fight with rabid foxes, and he shines with his sudden, almost choleric outbursts of bile.
The instrumental “Rat Salad”, with its conspiratorial rattling of bass lines, is made up of a guitar solo and a drum solo. In the first part Iommi shows how you can cook up a witty solo spot in no time, while the second part goes to the unstoppable Ward, before the two join forces again with Geezer at the end. The closing evergreen “Fairies Wear Boots”, complemented by the instrumental section “Jack the Stripper”, is perhaps even the most fun moment on the whole album when it comes to its chorus and its unusually ‘everyday’ lyrics. The words tell of the band members’ close encounter with a gang of neo-Nazi skinheads, who were debating whether to kick the stuffing out of a quartet of longhairs with joints in their hands, but luckily no incident followed. This closing evergreen has a very interesting and crafty structure, with unexpected time changes and tempo shifts, plenty of mischievous bass rattling interwoven with Iommi’s uncompromising guitar passages, and wrecking-ball drum stampedes. This time Ozzy’s vocal delivery is distinctly mocking, and he’s more than obviously having a blast at the expense of human stupidity, while the aggressive rhythm section and a dirty guitar riff back him up in perfect step.
“Paranoid” is, in every respect, the most important album by the heavy rock giants from Birmingham and a masterpiece of heavy metal in its embryonic form, the one that finally shot them into the stratosphere of the most exciting bands of the early seventies. That one of the greatest heavy rock albums of all time had a tremendous influence on the development of absolutely every form of heavy metal is something even the sparrows on the roof are chirping about by now. As incredible as it sounds, it’s still the only Black Sabbath album to reach the top of the UK charts, which further helped build their well-deserved monumental status. If a complete illiterate stops you and asks where to start exploring the Black Sabbath legacy, hand them “Paranoid” right away as your answer.
author: Peter Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. War Pigs
2. Paranoid
3. Planet Caravan
4. Iron Man
5. Electric Funeral
6. Hand of Doom
7. Rat Salad
8. Fairies Wear Boots
Line-up:
Ozzy Osbourne – vocals
Tony Iommi – guitar, flute
Geezer Butler – bass
Bill Ward – drums, congas
