Review by Sonny for Black Sabbath - Master of Reality (1971)

Of all their albums "Master of Reality" is the Black Sabbath album that has grown most in stature over the years in my mind. I got into the band around 1976 via "Paranoid" and that was my go-to Sabbath album for many years, alongside "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath", "Sabotage" and the debut, with "Master of Reality" and "Volume 4" taking up supporting roles. The track which kept drawing me back to "MoR" over the years, though, was the masterful closer "Into the Void" which still stands as my favourite Sabbath track of all and is one of their more doomy offerings, it signposting me down the road of future doom metal appreciation. As time has passed and I have become more and more of a doomhead, I have acquired greater appreciation of the doomier material of "Master of Reality" and it now stands as my ultimate Sabs release, despite stiff competition.

Tony Iommi's guitar tone on this third album is perfect, its deep and resonant fuzziness pitches perfectly what would become the signature sound of future acts like Saint Vitus, Pentagram and Electric Wizard, bolstered and boosted by the brilliant and often busy basswork of Geezer Butler, an aspect of Sabbath's sound that is not always given the credit it deserves. Bill Ward's jazz-influenced drumming style takes a more blunt and bludgeoning approach here than maybe it does on some Sabbath albums, although the way his runs switch from side to side on "Children of the Grave" (best experienced through headphones) is a brilliant bit of production work and adds a little something extra to an already brilliant track. Then, of course, there is the irrepressible Ozzy Osbourne whose influence on doom metal vocalists mustn't be underestimated as he showed that you don't need to be an especially technically gifted singer to be effective, as long as you are committed and have a degree of charisma. With rock music being newly dominated at the time by the Robert Plants and Ian Gillans of the world and their ridiculous vocal range, Ozzy stood tall and proclaimed himself their equal, on sheer strength of personality alone.

Then there are the riffs. I have said it before and I will say it again, Tony Iommi can write better riffs in his sleep than all but a select few metal songwriters can ever hope to come up with, having penned some of the most iconic riffs in the history of metal. From the crawling, weed smoke-drenched, oozing of Sweet Leaf, via the choppy, romping "Children of the Grave" and the plodding grooviness of "Lord of this World", to the ponderous lumbering of the opening to Into the Void, where Geezer follows Tony's riff for added gravitas, this is metal riff heaven, with these riffs sowing the seeds of inspiration for so many aspiring doom metal riff writers of years to come. Sure, the stoner element may be fairly prevalent here, but it is difficult to imagine a "Born Too Late", "Dopethrone" or "Forest of Equilibrium" existing as we know them without this album.

"Master of Reality" isn't all just about thundering, fuzz-drenched riffing however, with the album including several moments of quieter reflection, whether it be the soothing acoustic guitar of "Orchid" or the gentle reflectiveness and soul-searching of the psychedelic-sounding and melancholic "Solitude", which thematically, if not musically, also unwittingly helps set the aesthetic for doom metal's future melancholy side. Then there is the track which always baffled me after the dark lyricism and hints at satanic influence of the band's earlier material, the pro-religious "After Forever", which is a bit of a curveball lyrically and stylistically, having a much more upbeat riff and feeling than the rest of the album. The track has grown on me somewhat over the years, but if the album had to lose one, then this would be my choice.

So there we have it, for my money "Master of Reality" is one of the great metal albums, being an influence for both stoner and doom metal and perfecting a guitar sound that still stands tall to this day, over fifty years later, as a signature sound in the metal world.