Review Summary: Black Sabbath’s Paranoid is a very important piece for music, not only because it is considered to be one of the pieces to start heavy metal, but because it is a record that speaks to your soul.
Black Sabbath were on a ***ing streak in 1970, releasing two of the most important metal pieces in the same year. Black Sabbath firstly intended to call this album “War Pigs”, therefore this song is also depicted on the album cover art. According to lead singer Ozzy Osbourne the recording sessions for this album lasted for about 3 days, and they just went to the studio and play what they had to play.
The significance for this album comes from its very different style from 98% of the music recorded during the period. Although Black Sabbath songs usually follow a similar structure to the other bands of the era, their songs have much heavier riffs (Tony Iommi mostly tunes his guitar for more than one step down, but that is not all that makes them heavy) and they are talking about very different topics, having a more tragic character (which I think is driven from the “work all day, gain little” life that members had to face (Ozzy states that music was the only alternative)). The other very important thing for music is the vocal of the band which stands out, but also works great, seeing as you had Robert Plant and his like setting the vocal standard at the time. Ozzy might not be an opera singer, but anybody else singing Black Sabbath (see Ronnie James Dio performing Paranoid live for an example), no matter the power, octaves and bla-bla-bla just isn’t as crispy and appropriate. To summarize, all the previously mentioned elements are important because Black Sabbath played metal when calling their music that was just as retarded as calling it organic, however, they became successful because of their soul-touching music and creativity.
The album opens up with “War Pigs”, the lyrics here are amongst the most powerful anti-war ones, this song follows a traditional structure, but with the core metal elements. The lyrics and music feel very connected and true to each other, the song fearfully and beautifully graduates to the sad resolution of events, the apocalypse.
Paranoid is yet another song with wonderful poetry about depression and disconnection with the world, the guitar is faithful to the words as always. The song has no feeling of progression (although there is a solo and the riffs are changed a little bit (not sure about the second one)) of feelings which sums up the emptiness of the lyrics perfectly.
Planet Caravan is a magnificent drug influenced song, showing that the band is not a one-dimensional band that can’t write songs unless that don’t follow a formula. This is an important trademark for the band as it is not only calming, but it is a representation of the members’ drug abuse (LSD is most likely to have helped creating this song).
Iron Man has the most unique intro as it stands out even today when metal is almost older than 50 years now. This is Black Sabbath’s equivalent of Metallica’s Master of Puppets (for an example). Although some people like to see the text as an uninspired piece of random crap, I believe it to be much deeper, telling us that we should not worry about the future too much because we are destroying our present in a sci-fi story telling manner. The main riff is out of this world, just play it to me all day till I die.
Electric Funeral is a Black Sabbath song unique for the fact of lacking a solo, proving yet again the versatility of the band. Not having a solo is not a small thing, that is the thing that separates a radio rock song about people loving party and each other from an abstract non-existing location being created with music. The lyrics are similar to the other songs, focusing on an apocalypse yet again, but this time because of technology.
Hand of Doom is a song about a heroin addiction, taking a stance against it with an amazing story about a Vietnam veteran. The lyrics very deeply describe the initial reasons, the early and the last phase of the person’s life as an addict. A song with these lyrics is a little bit unusual for me, seeing as the band almost released one of their albums as “Snowblind” because of their cocaine abuse, but it’s great either way. The very important thing about this the influence, if you were to hear Hand of Doom today as a critic, you would think of its structure as very cliché metal one (although probably not about the riffs). And despite that, metal songs today still haven’t topped (although they have reached it) this level of song perfection.
Rat Salad is an instrumental song, although Warning had a longer instrumental session than this song’s runtime, this is one of the few instrumental pieces by the band. It is also a great previous track to Fairies wear boots’ bass intro. (It can still stand on its own, it’s not something like Breathe by Pink Floyd where they cut mid-story).
And my favorite bass line goes to… Dawn Patrol… Well, almost to Dawn Patrol because I somehow stumbled upon this track. It is very relaxing, that’s about it for the feeling, mainly because of the powerful bass.
