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Black Sabbath

A word of warning before I even begin to speak of Black Sabbath: "I am not a metal geek!" To all you metal purists out there who know this band inside out, from where Ozzy took a pee during a show in Cleveland back in '76, to the exact note played at 1:47 seconds into Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, I am not, nor will ever be as big a fan of Black Sabbath as you were, so put your egos aside and read on. Oh yeah, nor do I care much about the later Dio years. The only reason I even have Black Sabbath in my collection is for history purposes and more precisely, for their role in the development of metal and especially the "stoner rock" genre. Dio did not sound sludgy in any way, and if I want to hear people sing about wolves and dragons, this won't be the first place I will look. Besides, not even all the Black Sabbath albums with Ozzy have anything to do with what I'm looking for in hard rock.

This site is dedicated to weird, strange and original music, and some of these early albums were just that. They were definitely pioneering something with their slow, sludgy sound. It sure was heavy and evil-sounding for the time, many a parent becoming concerned over their kids' obsession with this band; and indeed what you have now are literally legions of faithful fans and followers, many of these kids are now themselves parents and many others have been encouraged to pick up an instrument and start up their own band because they just gosh darn loved the music so much.

And this is where my interest in the "godfathers of metal" begins. Many of these bands have simply emulated the Black Sabbath sound or made it more accessible, but the opposite was also true, many others have taken the sounds as a blueprint and worked on them to turn them into something new, fresh and exciting; to explore new possibilities: bands like The Melvins, Earth, Khanate, Saint-Vitus, Winter and Cathedral to name a few... The fun part now is trying to trace down specific links between Black Sabbath and some of these bands, figure out the evolution that had to have taken place; like studying the evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds. Fascinating stuff! But no, I'm not a metal geek!

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