A baby-faced former slaughterhouse worker who had done prison time for burglary, he sang with a Brummie twang and no apparent pretension. Geezer Butler – a guitarist shifted on to bass duties – made the sound even more substantial as he simply played in step with Iommi for an initial want of greater skill.Īnd then there was Osbourne. A heavy-handed, ‘bigger’ and sludgy sound was the result.
It was also a record which changed the course of musical history, despite having been recorded in a single day, the band using the time allotted in a London studio to just romp through their live set in the absence of any better ideas, recording live with minimal later overdubs.īlack Sabbath not only announced the band as the third and final part of the holy trinity of ‘heavy’ British bands, alongside Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple no-one had ever committed anything quite so much like the sonic equivalent of a sledgehammer to tape before and the album would come to be seen as the first heavy metal record.Ī number of factors conspired to make this unassuming-looking four-piece from Birmingham’s sound unlike any other.Ī stint in a Black Country sheet metal works had ended in guitarist Tony Iommi losing the tips of two fingers on his fretting hand, necessitating false plastic fingertips and detuning his guitar to make it easier to play.
Doom-filled and ominous, that opener still has a spine-chilling power 50 years after its release.Īppearing on Friday February 13, 1970, and bearing an unsettling, grainy image of a witchlike figure in the woods on the cover, Black Sabbath’s landscape was populated by wizards, devils and evil women.
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