A note here. Why say this here rather than for Led Zeppelin or any of a handful of other candidates? Zep were two albums in by the release of this one and rang with gigantic riffs and vocals from an iron foundry. However, they were also about expansion and exploration (the name itself refers to something both heavy and light) and were soon to release an album that was about half fully acoustic and folky (the next album had extensive acoustic numbers and the one after that had funky workouts, jazz rock solos and reggae). Deep Purple would continue veering towards a kind of heavy prog. While Sabbath showed they weren't just about the crunch even on this one their sheer commitment to the aesthetic of the gothic. Even a song that starts with a lute is aimed at the dark outside. I have no doubt the band thought of their music simply as rock, perhaps with a theatrical edge but rock all the same. But their remaining career has lived up to the promise of this first statement.
The Wizard starts with the kind of lonely train station blues harp figure that British Invasion bands wore like a badge of entry for the decade just gone. When the band comes in it fuses with the metal chord riff. After a lot of shuffling and bashing the vocal part of the song begins with a melody that wouldn't be out of place in an old Yardbird's cover version of a Howlin' Wolf number. Really? Isn't this against the rules? Well, they are only just being made as we listen. Chief rivals to the throne, Led Zeppelin were doing the same but never seemed bothered by how close they were to their roots. One and a half songs into Sabbath's debut and this already sounds old fashioned.
A very easy two chord groove that borders on jazz starts Behind the Wall of Sleep before a bluesy ascending riff starts the verse and is answered by an equally bluesy vocal that pans around the sound stage. The intensity of sleep states recall the H.P. Lovecraft story paraphrased in the title, including sleep paralysis and its terrors. A rocking instrumental takes us through to morning where all returns to sunlight and ease.
A meandering bass walk with a wah-wah pedal fades up, strolls around, realises it's in the wrong room and leaves again. The iconic modal riff of N.I.B. growls until the band kicks in behind it in full power. Ozzy sings with a stinging wail that though many doubt his love it is genuine and hers must also be real for this deal to work. Oh, his name is Lucifer, please take his hand. the genius of this is to present from within a dark and strident musical armour Satan is powerless without the will of the other. You don't have to believe in any of the pageantry to understand the abusive folie a deux to this. I don't know if they meant anything more than the devil meets the girl at the crossroads or how the flower children were being seduced (the Manson trials were still fresh news) but the force of the song allows much reframing. With instrumental workouts that sound like movie scores and Ozzy in great voice this will always sound ready and new.
Evil Woman struts around, proving that a cover version can be more vital than an original as long as you are willing to drag it into your own workspace and fashion it there. If it's less remarkable than the originals around it it at least doesn't beg you to skip it.
Lute and jews harp open Sleeping Village. Ozzy's vocal is dramatic but the words are pleasant. It's an intriguing juxtaposition. The band comes in after these very few lines and proceeds to a structured jam. This loses me, frankly but I'll have to give them the discipline in this rushed extended session for bringing what would have been a show stopper on stage into something at least listenable.
This moves seamlessly into Warning which is set in a swirl of Hendrix-style psychedelia. The words and vocal melody are all Britrock blues that you would have been hearing in Free, Led Zeppelin etc around you. Tony Iommi's guitar showcasing here verges into the samey territory that all those bands could. The one thing that Zeppelin had throughout their recording career was knowing the line between what they were expected to do on stage and what wouldn't be tolerable on record. Page's solos and instrumental breaks were mostly kept brief. Grand soloing was for live shows. That said, the guitar playing here is very fine. It's just that in context, in a crowd that included Page, Beck, Clapton, Hendrix and Peter Green this sounds more routine than impressive.
But what I'm missing here is that this is a kind of Please Please Me for the other end of the decade. This record was set down in less than one day and the overdubs (vocal doubling and a lot of guitar layering) not that long. The band was playing their stage show. If the recording lays bare how influenced they were by their peers, moments like the eerie guitar moaning in the dark of the end of Warning and all the original riffage and dynamics also show how well the band knew the emotional journey's of their songs and could steer them as musicians in control of their own power.
The cover art might well scream hokey now after generations of metal and goth record sleeves tried to go further but it works still for being understated. A green faced woman in black stands by a pond near an old farm house. It could be now or 1465. The problem lies in the inner gatefold with the band name in a font that looks enough like the kind of Art Deco era branding that was more fashionable on albums where the band shots are in grassy fields at magic hour. It really doesn't look like the band you'd expect. I wondered about this and Googled the font. There is one developed later that bears the band's name. I found a generator and typed in Daisy Maisy Love Bomb Band and it looked like this:
Anyway, the other thing on the inner cover is a wireframe inverted cross filled with a prose poem with imagery taken from the photograph. It's all atmospherics and Year 10 poetics about birds being silent from singing of too much terror. It was written by the photographer's assistant and comes so close to saying nothing with a lot of words that it's almost forgettable but I can't help wondering if it felt so try hard back in 1970.
This is an extraordinary debut from a band whose influence would govern what would come to be known as metal and well beyond that. I'll get to that in more detail when I write up the album that followed, Paranoid, later in the year as there's more to say from that context. But for this moment in rock music I can only dip me lid for a band who crafted their way out of endless blues workouts in pubs and school dances into self-generating folklore.
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