Having been out promoting the band’s fourth studio album, “Volume 4”, through 1972 and 1973, the tour had come to a rapid conclusion with Tony Iommi’s collapse after one gig towards the end of the run, resulting in the remaining dates of the tour having to be scrubbed, and the band actually going on a hiatus for the first time since their formation four years prior, with each member going their own way to spend some down time away from the spotlight. No doubt it seemed like a good idea at the time, but whether it played out that way or not is open to conjecture.
To read all four autobiographies of the four members of the band, 1973 appeared to be a tipping point of sorts. All four admit to a rampant drug and alcohol usage, and especially cocaine which had become the drug of choice. When the band reconvened at a rented home in Bel Air, Los Angeles, in order to write for the new album, they found that nothing was forthcoming. Perhaps the break had severed the momentum that the band had gained, or just relaxed them enough that they were unable to get back into that writing groove again. Tony feared writers block, either from the drug use or the pressure he felt upon him to get the band started and find the riffs that he had in the past to create the basis of their amazing songs. Geezer found his irritation with Ozzy growing, as he felt that Ozzy was leaning too much on him to provide the lyrics to the songs, rather than contributing more of his own. After a month of almost zero output, the band returned to the UK and rented Clearwater Castle to work in. Whether or not it was mood and surroundings of the dank castle that brought back the right creative environment for the masters of doom, whatever the reason the band found inspiration returning. While rehearsing in a dungeon in the castle, Tony came across the riff that became the basis of the title track of the album, and suddenly the band was back in business, and with it the album that became “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath”.
The opening salvo of the title track, that opening riff into the joining of bass and drums, and then Ozzy’s vocal, is a moment in time, one of those things that you still remember the first time you experienced it each and every time you start this album. Because it is unique, in such a way that any guitarist who first plays it at home must feel magic coursing through their fingers. From the distorted to the clear, from Ozzy starting off at a high octave and then going through the roof in the middle of the song, so much so that it became impossible for him to sing it in the years since, is iconic and amazing.
This is followed by the spine shuddering “A National Acrobat”, that opening riff which is such a changeup for the band with Ozzy crooning over the top. In many ways it is very un-Black Sabbath like, until you reach the middle passage, where the crunch comes back into the riff, and suddenly the true heaviness of the track is revealed. Tony directs the song throughout with riff and wah pedal, then plays it out with another un-Sabbath type riff. The whole song on first impressions is so much different from what you would expect the band to produce if you only knew those most played tracks, but by the end, it is amorphic. Some may call it underrated, while I just call it genius.
“Fluff” is an instrumental composed by Tony, in the spirit of other musical pieces the band has placed on previous albums between songs. As I’m sure I have said before, to me the albums would be better served not to have them there, breaking that flow, but they are. “Fluff” to me has always been like the music you hear when you are on call waiting, because in essence that’s how I feel when I hear it on this album, I’m on hold, waiting for the next song to start. At least when I come off call waiting here, I am not disappointed.
How good a song is “Sabbra Cadabra”? Brilliantly upbeat, both lyrically and musically, the piano and synth perfectly utilised even in a Black Sabbath song that does nothing to restrict the heaviness of the track in the slightest. Every time I hear this song, it lifts my spirits, whether they needed lifting or not. This is one of Sabbath’s greatest even songs, and a supreme accomplishment by making what is technically by the lyrics a love song into a song that a partner could never ever be disappointed in hearing you sing it to them. It is a brilliant way to conclude the first side of the album.
Side 2 then opens up with the equally brilliant “Killing Yourself to Live”, composed by Geezer as he was laid up in hospital recovering from the effects that his wild lifestyle was causing him. Well, both he and his bandmates. Here is another song that some would call underrated but I have always considered one of their best. The bass heavy under riff is what immediately makes this a noticeably Geezer influenced track, and hearing his fingers up and down that fretboard and being the solid basis of the song is what makes it for me. Ozzy’s vocal here is also perfect, not extending beyond what the song needs, and sung at a level that us mere mortals can actually get close to as we sing along. One of Sabbath’s best.
“Who Are You?” came about from an Ozzy composition, which he relates in his autobiography. He had gone out and bought himself a synthesiser, and while indisposed one evening he came up with this tune which he also happened to record. Tony expressed surprise at this in his book, as he claimed that Ozzy had no idea how to play the synth. Perhaps he didn’t, but the basic structure of the song he came up with made this song, and again, while it may not be in the absolute wheelhouse of what most consider to be the Black Sabbath heavy guitar and drum song, it incorporates the experimental side that the band had always had a knack of incorporating into their music along the way.
More of that can be heard on “Looking for Today”, though it is a much more basic song in format and layout. Overall, the vocals tend to hold the song together, though in a somewhat repetitive fashion that can get a little monotonous.
The continued movement of Black Sabbath from the founders of heavy metal and doom music to another plane continues with the amazing “Spiral Architect” which concludes the album. The way that this song rises and falls in platitudes, with heavy passages and beautiful vocals, the riffing guitars then complemented and even overridden in places by the strings that are a part of the track, is just amazing. It has been written in places and occasionally said in interviews that the band didn’t want to be held by the constraints of the music they wrote early in their careers, and that they always had the desire to expand their songs because of the artists they loved coming up through their childhood, such as The Beatles and even Jethro Tull, who Tony had flirted with prior to Sabbath signing their first recording contract. In some ways (and this is certainly the case on albums such as “Technical Ecstasy” and “Never Say Die”) this didn’t always work. Here on “Spiral Architect”, it is a rousing success.
How in the hell is this album 50 years old? I don’t often feel my age, but listening to this album today, and actually have it hit me that it is 50 years old, is just amazing.
Having not fallen into heavy metal until the middle of the 1980’s decade, I found all of Black Sabbath’s albums up to that time in a mixed up order, generally discovering them whenever either myself or one of my mates could afford one of their albums, at which point we would all bring in our cassette tapes and get a copy recorded for us. Apart from the Dio fronted albums, “Paranoid” and this album were the first Sabbath albums I owned, and perhaps that is why I have so much love for it. But I think there is a reaction here to what was happening in and around the band at the time. We touched on the drug and alcohol problems, which caused the tour to stop and the band members to go away for awhile, and then the difficulty that was faced in eventually coming up with ideas. All of that is perhaps a good thing, because the band’s previous album “Volume 4”, the episode of which you can find in Season 3 of this podcast, was one where the experimenting in formula arguably went too far too soon. Having the break, as short as it was, and finding the inspiration again from a gothic castle, seemed to bring back the real Sabbath. Yes, there was some additions to the music such as synth and strings in places to complement the formula, but it is the Tony Iommi guitar riffs, the Geezer Butler bass lines that boom through the speakers, the Bill Ward drumming and Ozzy Osbourne vocal brilliance that shines back through every song on this album, that creates what is one of the band’s masterpieces. Could the band have created it if they weren’t all in the midst of trying to kill themselves with drugs and alcohol? Or what may they have done with clear heads?
I don’t know how many times I have listened to this album over the past month. A lot. And having the vinyl spinning in my own Metal Cavern at home, coming at me out of the speakers, and feeling the bass thumping in my chest, and Ozzy’s vocals screaming through my eardrums, is still such a satisfying experience. It is an impossible task to try and rank Sabbath albums, through generations, or simply through the first eight albums they produced. Suffice to say that this is still a joyous experience every time I put it on. It lifts spirits, it pounds away the angst and anger, and just leaves you in a far better mood once it is done than you were in before you started. And if an album can do that, it is something to keep close and use it for that at all times.
