MoeFOHs Album Of The Week... Week #47

[MoeFOH]

MoeFOH's Album of the Week 🎶

Same as the movie thread, each week we're going to spotlight an album... be it a classic, new release, hidden gem, or outright turd... and open it for discussion: i.e. post up your favourite tracks, clips, lyrics, experiences if you saw live, etc... or dive deeper and give us a critique on why you think it's great, overrated, or a complete train wreck... And finally score it for us...  

All contributors go into a monthly prize draw for a 3-cigar sampler! 

PM me with suggestions if there's an album you want to nominate for next week's discussion. 

 

Week #47: Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath is the debut studio album by English heavy metal band Black Sabbath, released on 13 February 1970 by Vertigo Records in the United Kingdom and Warner Bros. Records in the United States on 1 June 1970. The album is widely regarded as the first heavy metal album, and the opening track, "Black Sabbath", has been referred to as the first doom metal song.

Upon release, the album reached number eight on the UK Albums Charts and number 23 on the US Billboard 200. Black Sabbath is included in Robert Dimery's 2005 musical reference book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Recording
According to Black Sabbath's guitarist and founding member Tony Iommi, the group's debut album was recorded in a single twelve-hour session on 16 October 1969. Iommi said: "We just went in the studio and did it in a day, we played our live set and that was it. We actually thought a whole day was quite a long time, then off we went the next day to play for £20 in Switzerland." Aside from the bells, thunder and rain sound effects added to the beginning of the opening track and the double-tracked guitar solos on "N.I.B." and "Sleeping Village", there were virtually no overdubs added to the album. Iommi recalls recording live: "We thought, 'We have two days to do it and one of the days is mixing.' So we played live. Ozzy was singing at the same time, we just put him in a separate booth and off we went. We never had a second run of most of the stuff."

The key to the band's new sound on the album was Iommi's distinctive playing style that he developed after an accident at a sheet metal factory where he was working at the age of 17 in which the tips of the middle fingers of his fretting hand were severed. Iommi created a pair of false fingertips using plastic from a dish detergent bottle and detuned the strings on his guitar to make it easier for him to bend the strings, creating a massive, heavy sound. "I'd play a load of chords and I'd have to play fifths because I couldn't play fourths because of my fingers," Iommi explained to Phil Alexander in Mojo in 2013. "That helped me develop my style of playing, bending the strings and hitting the open string at the same time just to make the sound wilder." In the same article bassist Geezer Butler added, "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."

Over to you...

How do you rate it? 🤔

Thoughts, experiences, memories... post em' up! 

Score it out of 10!  

[MoeFOH]

 

[Lewberry]

2016 Black Sabbath, two nights in a row at Madison Square Garden. Traveled to NY for the first time in my life, on a solo adventure, and saw them both nights.  Really, a time I will remember being one of the greatest, forever.

[Greenhorn2]

Definitely a banger. Some of the first heavy rock I ever listened to and grew up on it. 10/10 for me. Listen to Sabbath on a regular basis to this day. They don't make it like that anymore.

[Chibearsv]

My first listen to Paranoid was my introduction to hard rock at 12 years old. To say I’m a fan of their music is an understatement. I love all Black Sabbath. 10/10

 

[Ford2112]

It's a groundbreaking album . 1970 had nothing like it. Launched a thousand ships but nothing will ever be heavier than Sabbath. 10 stars,I'd give 20 if I could. They had a hell of a run.

 

 

 

[Puros Y Vino]

10/10.  Landmark album.  It endures to this day.

[Capn_Jackson]

Incredible album. My Dad has several original Sabbath vinyls, and my brother and I fight over who gets it when he passes away. I know my brother will get the Sabbath records, and that’s fine. I’ll get the Hendrix and Zeppelin.

All of those early Sabbath albums do it for me. I probably like Paranoid better, but Black Sabbath is a treasure too.