Black Sabbath: Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

Black Sabbath: Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

1973

Warner Bros Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath  2. A National Acrobat  3. Fluff  4. Sabra Cadabra  5. Killing Yourself to Live 6. Who Are You  7. Looking for Today  8. Spiral Architect


Man, look at that title..."Sabbath Bloody Sabbath"...And that artwork A man writhing on a bed emblazoned with the numerals 666,  while skeletons and demons torment him...Hell yea! Surely, this must be the most downright heaviest, most evil Black Sabbath albums yet, right?

Ehhh, not so much...It's actually their cleanest, most professional and well arranged record yet...Strings, synthesizers, tons of harmonized guitar leads. Rick Wakeman on piano...Huh?

Luckily they ease us into the sound...The title tracks kicks things off here and it sounds exactly like you'd expect;  big bruising riff, Ozzy's graveyard wail, and one of the heaviest damn breaks in metal history...Ohhh, this is good shit.. I mean, all the heaviness breaks for a moment or two for the  "Nobody would ever let you know..." section, but it's cool...Unexpected....and it makes the rest of the song sound even heavier in its contrast..It sounds just like the Sabbath of old, but with a lot more production and songwriting tricks up their sleeves...

"A National Acrobat" comes next and is straight ahead hard rock, and "Fluff" isn't that surprising either...It's an acoustic instrumental, very much in the style of "Laguna Sunrise," just a bit expanded, but wait..."Sabra Cadabra" sounds like Thin Lizzy, and features a very prog rock Moog solo..."Who Are You" is almost all Moog...and then there's the incredible "Looking For Today" which has a great chorus that sounds so...happy?

It took a lot of listens for the rest of this album to sink in for some reason...It kind of just seemed like Black Sabbath largely dropping their previous crushing sound and going for a more traditional hard rock style,  but the songs didn't seem to be there...But give this thing some time to work...After a few listens the songs started to distinguish themselves and those impenetrably complex, constantly  shifting arrangements started to make sense and soon enough "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" jumped to the top of the heap as one of my favorite Black Sabbath albums...If it happened to me, it can happen to you...

So let's check out "Looking For Today" by Black Sabbath...Enjoy...