Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (180gm Vinyl) (Reissue)
‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’ was the fifth studio album by Black Sabbath, originally released in December 1973. The album was produced by the band and Tom Allom and recorded at Morgan Studios in London.
Building off the stylistic changes introduced on ‘Vol 4,’ new songs incorporated synthesizers, strings, keyboards and more complex arrangements. The lyrics also delved into new areas, with Mojo opining in 2013, “The title track led into an expansive set as Butler’s lyrics contemplated the mysteries of birth and DNA in ‘A National Acrobat’ and “Spiral Architect’, respectively.”
Singer, Ozzy Osbourne wrote that ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’ was “Our last truly great album, I think… And with the music we’d managed to strike just the right balance between our old heaviness and our new, ‘experimental’ side.”
Drew Struzan (who would later create the iconic cover to Alice Cooper’s ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’ LP) was the artist requested to do the cover painting, under the direction of Pacific Eye & Ear’s Ernie Cefalu. The idea behind the artwork was to depict a man dying a horrible death on the front cover, and on the back cover the same man dying a “good” death. It depicts a man on a bed, seemingly having a nightmare or a vision of being attacked by demons in human form. At the top of the bed is a large skull with long, outstretched arms and 666 (the Number of the Beast) written below it. The other side of the album features the opposite of the front cover.
Key to the band’s new sound on the album is 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.
‘Black Sabbath’ has been lauded as perhaps the first true heavy metal album. It has also been credited as the first record in the stoner rock and goth genres.
Now reissued on 180gm vinyl, which includes a copy of the album on CD.
