SABBATH BLOODY SABBATH

Black Sabbath's stay in Los Angeles, despite all the band's excesses, had worked for "Vol 4". But the use and abuse of unholy substances during the recording process of the album, coupled with extensive promotional tours, took much of the energy of the Englishmen, who decided to return to England in search of inspiration and motivation in the dungeons of a medieval castle in Gloucestershire, where they gestated "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" (1973), the band's fifth album.

Once Tonny Iommi uncorked the bottle of creativity with the monumental riff that gave birth to the powerful and iconic song "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath", one of the band's jewels, the rest of the pieces found their way, from the hypnotic half-time of "A Natural Acrobat" with a histrionic and loquacious Ozzy, the metal intensity of "Killing Yourself to Live" with a great solo by Iommi and the fleeting luminosity of the hard rocker "Looking for Today".

To add nuance to their new venture and complement the band's traditional thick structures with a more polished sound, they added string and wind instruments and invited virtuoso Rick Wakeman, who made a significant contribution on the beautiful instrumental "Fluff", incorporating many textures with his keyboards, in the final section of the energetic and optimistic "Sabbra Cadabra" with a very rhythmic piano, and in the psychedelic and misty 'Who Are You?", sharing moogs and synthesizers with Iommi.

And the elaborate "Spiral Architect", an exercise in progressive colouring that combines introductory and delicate acoustic arpeggios, symphonic arrangements and powerful guitar licks over the base built by Geezer Butler's bass and Bill Ward's incisive cymbal-filled percussion, concludes a work that showed the musical maturity that Black Sabbath had already reached at that time.

Excellent.

4/4.5 stars

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