Black Sabbath: Black Sabbath [RHINO / WARNER]

Why you'll love it

Black Sabbath's debut is widely regarded as the very first heavy metal album, and Rolling Stone named its title track the greatest metal song of all time. It was recorded in a single day.

This edition

• Rhino / Warner pressing of the original US version
• Includes "Wicked World"

About the album

A tolling bell, rain, thunder and then that riff: three slow, ominous notes that changed rock forever. Black Sabbath's debut opens with a song that still sounds genuinely frightening more than 50 years later, and the four lads from Birmingham (Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward) cut the whole album in one long day in November 1969, basically playing their live set.

Iommi's sound came partly from necessity: he'd lost the tips of two fingers in a factory accident and tuned down to make playing easier, which made everything heavier and darker. "The Wizard" blasts in on Ozzy's harmonica, "N.I.B." opens with Butler's famous bass solo, and "Wicked World" and the long "Warning" jam show off the band's bluesy roots. Critics hated it at the time, and the fans have been proving them wrong ever since.

Also at Kops: more Black Sabbath on vinyl · browse Metal

Tracklist

Listen

On Rhino / Warner, a reissue of the 1970 album.