SABBATH BLOODY SABBATH

Sabbath has come of age! An excellent introduction to Sabbath which proved to me that their is more than meets the eyes with this band, two songs on this album will make you hooked; Sabbra Cadabra and Who Are You with their prog keyboards and classical leanings, the rest of this album will grow on you in a short period and then you'll realise you can't give this album less than five stars. The album kicks off with Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, a great introduction, yes its heavy, but so original, the guitar riffs and style of Ozzy's vocals so cerebral, and surreal to me it sounds like the tunes just come from a different place, but such were the 1970s. It seems to me when the music goes up a notch in heavyness so does the level of creativity. I certainly find their music fascinating at times. ANational Acrobat reminds me of Wishbone Ash's Argus, but I'm not sure, nevertheless Sabbath spins it their own way,Iommi makes some brililant sounds on his guitar Fluff is a pleasant acoustic piece memerable tune, which prooved to me how diverse these guys were, its not just noise. Sabbra Cadabra is a fantastic piece of music I've been playing this tune to ad nauseum and beyond, here Rick Wakeman's contribution is (of course magical) I wish Wakeman stuck with this band for more than one song while he was away from Yes. Everything about this song screams brilliance Ozzy's singing over Iommi's riffs the awesome mind blowing instrumental in the middle make Sabbath rfub shoulders wiuth the giants of prog comfortably. Killing Yourself to Live is a traditional Sabbath piece, full of bright energy its one of those pieces that would have to be seen and heard live, with midway a a brillian memeorable bluesy bend by Iommi again with Ozzy's brilliant voice complementing it the song changes to a traditonal blues tune harking back to John Mayall and the Blues Breakers, and gives the song a strong prog resonance with its changes. Who Are You has this evil, throbbing sounding synthesizers the lyrics are about questioning authority, a beautiful (yes you read correctly) classical bolero piece in the middle that cement Sabbath's place in the archives. Looking For Today sounds kind relatively upbeat and quite influential to Rush, while Ozzy sounds a bit like Sting it has beautiful flute in it, and Ozzy voice sounds really uplifting when he sings therepeated lines "looking for today", this song will make you feel as good as any Rush rocker, I really like it when Ozzy says "Listen" in the song those who've heard this song will know what I mean. Spiral Architectstarts witrh a nice acoustic piece that adds an epic feel to the piece, which then morphs into a thrilling rocker and has brilliant experimental music with orchestra with a kind of climbing tension to it. What I Love about Sabbath is that they wern't afraid to turn of the gain on the guitar and compose some really diverse stuff, the songs Sabbra Cadabra, Who Are You, Spiral Architect are pure prog while the rest of the songs have a strong prog resonance with their changes, musicality and sheer creativity and innovation. Believe me you don't have to be a metal head to enjoy this stuff, I can't stand metal but Sabbath has so much strength, innovation and substance to their material just grabs you,and it comes from an age when what they were doing with their heavy riffs was new and unique before it was borrowed and used into banality by countless metal groups,(just like Kraftwerk with techno). What a lot of metal bands have missed the point with Sabbath is that they were diverse, the unique phrasing of Ozzy's voice and Ioomi's guitars, sadlly a lot of metal bands seem to only get inspired by Iommi's gain and the bands dark image (I'm not saying all metal). But like I said earlier there is more than meets the eye with Sabbath. Pure brilliance!