This song blows me away. About two words after Koko Taylor starts singing.

I’m so lucky

I grew up as a kid in the late 70s, early 80s. I had heard of Ozzy and forgot about him. Roxanne Roxanne, Run DMC, Duran Duran and other stuff pushed metal away. Sure Quiet Riot, Twister Sister and others slipped in a bit but metal kind of took a backseat til the 90s. Around the time of Nirvana,  someone put War Pigs and Paranoid on a mix tape for me. I really liked the songs and thought  “wow, so this is why Ozzy” is so popular, Okay glad I heard it. But then when looking for other albums and songs I was really shocked when I saw the date on the Paranoid album War Pigs came from.

I remembered older kids who liked Ozzy were cool and beating me up in the 80s, I kind of assumed they were from around then. It turned out it was 1970. So here is this hardcore heavy metal album I really never heard much of  despite listening to metal and rock through the 80s and 90s (Thanks Q107). I somehow assumed Black Sabbath was some 80s thing, not something from the Led Zeppelin, Jeff Beck, Rolling Stones era. The sound of Paranoid was much later, so much more ahead, it was metal. There was no way it was that old. I thought this was way after Motorhead started; Not 7 years before!.This album makes Steppenwolf’s “heavy metal thunder” seem like rain drops falling on my head. Steppenwolf may be the first to say the phrase in a song, Black Sabbath is the first to actually put it out there.

This album touches on many things associated with metal, hard times living in society, hard times with drugs, hard times with faeries. It speaks to many people in words even before you hear the music. Paranoid is the epitomy of depression. Iron man kicks your ass and mine about the place,  Iron Man stands alone forever as the individual’s power ballad. War Pigs eclipses loser hippy war-is-bad-i-have-no-ideas by about a million miles, small sample:

Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor

That song, taken in its entirety, it says more about war and peace than most songs from any era nevermind the 60s. It makes five-to-one seem lazy.

Musically, the entire way through , even in dirge , going between thundering metal chords never heard on earth and slow painful wallows between, this album is sharp, heavy, loud, intense, with an edge never heard ; electric, metallic. And sadly, rarely heard since. Wolfmother, the odd Audioslave or QOTSA song touches on this album. But never come close enough. Unlike all other Black Sabbath albums, this plays all the way through with no low points, no imperfections, just changes in attitude while maintaining something few albums manage for more than a second.