Black Sabbath
- Scores: Noise 3, Unease 3, Complexity 1 (each 1 to 5)
- Genre: Metal, Heavy metal, Doom metal
- Mood: ominous, bleak, heavy
- Sound: downtuned riffs, tritone riffs, blues-based, slow and heavy
Black Sabbath is widely regarded as the first true heavy metal album. The title track is built almost entirely on a slowly played tritone, the “devil’s interval”, opening with bells, thunder and rain, and it is often called the first doom metal song. Producer Rodger Bain recorded most of the album in a single 12-hour session in November 1969, with almost no overdubs, so it largely sounds like the band’s live set. Tony Iommi played with partial fingertips after a factory accident and restrung his guitar with a banjo string and shifted strings to make bending easier. The lyrics are dark, occult and horror-based, and side two is loose blues-rock jamming influenced by Cream. It laid the groundwork for doom, stoner rock and heavy metal as a whole.
Track list
- Black Sabbath (6:20)
- The Wizard (4:24)
- Behind the Wall of Sleep (3:37)
- N.I.B. (6:08)
- Evil Woman (3:25)
- Sleeping Village (3:46)
- Warning (10:28)