November 2020 Feature Release - The Guardians Edition
It's now November 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. We're really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on our chosen releases so don't be shy.
This month's feature release for The Guardians is the utter classic 1973 fifth album from heavy metal godfathers Black Sabbath. I'm interested to hear where you think it sits amidst the star-studded back-catalogue of metal's most important & highly revered exponent.
https://metal.academy/releases/5
Let me state categorically that "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" is a great Black Sabbath album. It saw the band expanding dramatically on the hints at innovation they'd shown on "Vol. 4" & the outcome was an enthralling new take on what heavy metal music had the potential to be. Remember... this was Black Sabbath's fifth album & there hadn't really been anyone else that had managed to create a genuine heavy metal record by that stage which is quite remarkable in itself. That's not to say that this is a perfect record mind you as there are a couple of weak tracks included (see "Fluff" & "Looking For Today") but the highlights are easily strong enough to carry them (see the classic title track & "Killing Yourself To Live") & the more expansive array of influences & production techniques still sound fresh & exciting today. "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" may not make my top five for Sabbath overall but it's definitely a stronger record than a good 70% of the band's studio albums & that still amounts to a damn fine heavy metal release. I'd take it comfortably over the 1972's "Vol. 4" which I find to be a touch overrated, despite being generally enjoyable.
4/5
I agree with Daniel that Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is a better album than Vol.4, except that I would probably go further and rate it as one of my all-time favourite heavy metal albums. Sabbath stretched out and expanded their sound into more progressive territory, even adding Rick Wakeman of Yes on keyboards to hammer the point home. Yet this is still fundamentally a heavy metal record and it is quite mind-boggling to realise that Sabbath were already taking the genre into a further dimension BEFORE ANYONE ELSE WAS EVEN PLAYING IT! It's almost as if everyone else was playing catch up even before they had started. Great songs abound: the title track, Sabbra Cadabra, Killing Yourself to Live, Spiral Architect and the amazing A National Acrobat (although after more than forty years I still don't know what that means - if you can enlighten me please do).
I honestly believe this is a hugely underrated album along with Sabotage, as Sabbath hit the sweet spot between the point where they had mastered their trade, particularly their songwriting and their coke-fuelled over-ambitious and sloppy phase that ultimately led to the mark one lineup's demise. Very few bands can match the Sab's run of albums from the debut to Sabotage and they made them all without following anyone else's template. I can't say for certain that Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is my favourite Sabbath album, but equally I can't say it's not!
Having gone back and re-listened to Black Sabbath's first six studio albums have made me realize how much their sound changed over the first five years. Given that this band was taking rock and roll to places it had never been before and were ridiculed by the mainstream for it, but Ozzy and company were not simply contempt with their sound from Paranoid and Master of Reality. And this record proves it.
I never truly realized how remarkable until just recently. For the longest time, I felt as if the debut self-titled album was the pinnacle of Black Sabbath's career. But It was clear with Sabbath Bloody Sabbath that they were going to take the more alien tones of what we now know as doom metal from the self titled debut, and the more rock leaning "accessibility" of the Paranoid and Master of Reality LP's. The title track is excellent, "Sabbra Cadabra" is slightly more uptempo, but the grooves are heavy, Ozzy's vocal performance is stunning, and the guitar leads/solos are among some of the best in Black Sabbath's entire discography. The album ends with a really cheesy strings outro on "Spiral Architect" that is reminiscent to "The End" of Abbey Road, but it fits the environment so incredibly well that it is almost impossible to hate. I even really enjoy the acoustic interlude, "Fluff" as a show of restraint and anticipation.
The self titled debut may have been the record that invented heavy metal, but Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is the album that nearly perfected it. Almost every song on this record (with the exception of "Looking for Today") has purpose. Sabbath must have known about the shockwaves they were making in the underground, even as the mainstream had to reluctantly acknowledge their existence. But Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is the magnum opus and has forced to reconsider my favourite Sabbath album.
9/10