Wednesday, April 6, 2011

#345 Black Sabbath - Paranoid

The first one was promising. Keepit rolling!

Fucking. Disclaimer: Track 1 is war pigs, which is also Track 1, underneath some Ludacris, on Girl Talk's All Day. Its amazing how much hearing this song fosters my respect for All Day's intro maneuver, and conversely, how much the Girl Talk song makes me appreciate this album. I've already spent plenty of words talking about Girl Talk though. What about this album?

It is the obvious, great extension of the pure riffage on the self titled predecessor. Here, the sludgyness is trimmed, the overall sound is made more listenable, while sacrificing none of the actual intensity and full thigh foot stomping appeal. There were lots of little surprises here. I sort of assumed that Paranoid was a bloated, overlong slog, but it is in and out in under 3 minutes, blasting through every idea it has, in with some Stoogey solos, and gone long before it gets old. I've heard Iron Man as many times as anyone, but it sounds better in context. Even slow outlier Planet Caravan (along with No Quarter, a couple years later) establishes a template for the trippy metal song, a sound that would rear its head on countless grunge metal side 2's decades later.

Here is Sabbath distilled. Still not my thing, but kind of brilliant anyway. I had no predisposition to give it ay particular respect, but in my listen, it earned it anyway 4/5

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