Legendary Bands - Black Sabbath Posters

Heavy metal began coalescing long before Black Sabbath arrived on the scene--Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, the Who and the Kinks had all made contributions to the fledgling genre. But Sabbath added some entirely new twists. Instead of focusing on virtuosic displays and high-concept songwriting, the Birmingham, England quartet stripped it down to a sludgy, throbbing, primordial ooze balanced by frontman Ozzy Osbourne's deep affection for pop hooks.

Black Sabbath's early efforts were triumphs of minimalism, reducing rock to its most elemental appeal. Instead of trying to get inside the narcotic experience, they simply celebrated taking drugs; rather than tapping into cosmology and Middle Earth, they shamelessly borrowed horror movie imagery; and oblivious to more bourgeois concerns such as ennui and angst, they dove right into alienation and escapism. Their most memorable stab at politics was "War Pigs," which painted unspecified war-mongers in an evil light, "just like witches at black masses."

But what their pacifist statement lacked in sophistication it more than made up for in musical might. Osbourne's keening vocals and deadpan earnestness imparted the songs with a distinctive kind of anti-charisma which he took with him (along with the persistent pop fixation that lurked behind Sabbath's greatest hits) when he left Black Sabbath in 1979 to embark on the second leg of his influential career.

Even before Osbourne's departure, however, Sabbath had begun to decline--album by album, the group's increasing lack of focus resulted in odd experiments that apparently aspired to prog-rock complexity but ended up sounding like meandering preludes to Supertramp and Boston. The musicianship was as driving as ever, but the pop glimmer that made all the inky brooding compelling during Osbourne's tenure was gone and the succession of singers who fronted the band--including Ronnie James Dio (Rainbow), Ian Gillen (Deep Purple) and Tony Martin--simply couldn't replicate the odd anxiety-ridden befuddlement that was Osbourne's--and Sabbath's--signature.

With the exception of Dio's first efforts with the group, most latter-day Sabbath sounds unpleasantly similar to much of the cut-rate metal that they have inspired. In Summer '97, the original Black Sabbath, including Osbourne, regrouped for Osbourne's Ozzfest tour; the band released the live reunion album, simply titled Reunion, in October 1998.