August 2020 Feature Release - The Guardians Edition

It's now August which of course means that we'll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we're asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. Ben & I will certainly be contributing & we look forward to hearing your thoughts too.

This month's feature release for The Guardians is 1970's genre-defining "Paranoid" album from heavy metal godfathers Black Sabbath. So much has been said about the quality & impact of this record over the years but we're keen to get your honest opinions. How much do you enjoy it & where do you rank it in the illustrious Sabbath back catalogue overall?

https://metal.academy/releases/2

Come on, surely this album is actually encoded into the DNA of all self-respecting metalheads. It should be required teaching on any school curriculum. Personally it's the album that began my love affair with metal. I'd been listening to more mainstream rock in the early half of the seventies, The Who, Queen and Alice Cooper being particular favourites, but when I heard Paranoid around '76 something clicked in my brain and I knew I was home! In fact my obsessive need to check out new music, I am convinced, is down to my need to reproduce that very first hit as War Pigs boomed out of those shabby old speakers and I felt a rush unlike anything I'd ever experienced before. This album was the introduction to a lifelong obsession and I will be eternally grateful that it exists.

I'm pretty sure that Sabbath was my introduction to heavy metal as well (well, if you don't include the Twisted Sister video clips I'd see on TV). My dad brought home a second-hand double cassette Ozzy-period compilation tape (that I've never been able to identify in modern times) some time around 1986 & it blew me away. Previous to that I'd been obsessively spinning my dad's hard rock collection. "Paranoid" was unsurprisingly the record that contributed the most heavily to that compilation so when I gave the proper albums a try I found the most comfort there. Time has seen me revisiting all of Sabbath's back-catalogue repeatedly with a particularly in-depth analysis done during the recording of the first few Metal Academy podcasts but "Paranoid" has stayed at the top of the pile for me personally. It's the absolute pinnacle of 70's metal as far as I'm concerned & I don't think Tony Iommi has ever managed to top it.

4.5/5

I'm not gonna lie, this album left me conflicted. I can see it's appeal. I can tell that the album is really good, and just like with Darkthrone's A Blaze In The Northern Sky, I am truly grateful that it exists. But as I said in my review, this record feels like an attempt to "commercialize" metal; to make it popular in hopes that it may become a trend. The self titled record from Sabbath managed to be a far more unique experience.

I have lived my entire life as a fan of metal and have always been treated as an outsider because of it. When I turn on classic rock radio and I hear "Paranoid" or "Iron Man" come on, I enjoy it, but something about it feels wrong. As if heavy metal could not have become a phenomenon without it. Granted, this was the 1970s and promoting your music was far more challenging; you could not just post on Facebook with "hey guys check out my demo!" and if it was not accessible within reason, radio would never play it. 

That said, this is still a very good record, one that would set the framework for an entire genre and this entire website. We are all incredibly grateful for its existence.

7/10

One of Sabbath's flawless releases for me, full of the well-known "hits" like War Pigs and Iron Man as well other less obvious gems such as Hand of Doom.  Never anything less than 5 stars for me.