47 years ago today...BLACK SABBATH

I guess 47 isn't a special number, like 50, but since Black Sabbath has called it quits it seems relevant.

February 13, 1970 Sabbath released its self titled Debut in the UK and the whole world changed.

Incidentally, This also happens to be one of the best Sabbath releases in their giant catalog.

Here's what Rolling Stone had to say in 1970 around the time of the US release:

"Over across the tracks in the industrial side of Cream country lie unskilled laborers like Black Sabbath, which was hyped as a rockin' ritual celebration of the Satanic mass or some such claptrap, something like England's answer to Coven. Well, they're not that bad, but that's about all the credit you can give them. The whole album is a shuck — despite the murky songtitles and some inane lyrics that sound like Vanilla Fudge paying doggerel tribute to Aleister Crowley, the album has nothing to do with spiritualism, the occult, or anything much except stiff recitations of Cream clichés that sound like the musicians learned them out of a book, grinding on and on with dogged persistence. Vocals are sparse, most of the album being filled with plodding bass lines over which the lead guitar dribbles wooden Claptonisms from the master's tiredest Cream days. They even have discordant jams with bass and guitar reeling like velocitized speedfreaks all over each other's musical perimeters yet never quite finding synch — just like Cream! But worse."

I guess maybe RS would say hindsight is 20/20.

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Tags:  Black Sabbath, Rolling Stone, Debut  

Kenny Larson    February 13, 2017