PARANOID

After introducing dark tones and obscurity to the prematurely rising "heavy metal" on their impressive debut "Black Sabbath" (1970) -it's enough to realize of it just by checking the terrifying album cover-, this astonishing group formed by apparently insane but amazingly instinctive talented masters-of-performance musicians, release arguably their definitive masterpiece.

Just as if there was necessary any kind of reaffirmation that they were shaping as one of the most interesting acts of dense-potent rock, Black Sabbath manages to reconcile every artistic issue the band was actually developing: their powerful performance based on a psychedelic view from hard-intricate blues, touches of progressive rock and always some scary-dark posture surrounding (let's not forget they took the name for the band from an underground terror motion picture) combined with some of the greatest riffs ever made and exciting rock structures.

From this apparently non-attaching poles mixture, they bring perhaps the best song in history of heavy metal nowadays considered also an anthem for rock 'n roll: "Iron man".

It's not just a distinctive genius riff, it's actually Tony Iommi making easy what's actually difficult: shuddering the listener with just a few notes not even on a fast key, but mastery performed with density, depth and carrying the sound to a extreme bottom, Geezer Butler turning bass into a rhythm machine being much more than merely a liner, Bill Ward extremely sticked to Butler forming a perfect timing base machine and also shining himself through accurate arrangements, and of course Ozzy Osbourne and his personal unique vocal performance conception.

Then there are also lots of key tracks that show righteous examples of Sabbath's ambitions: the opener "War pigs" is a killer one: again the interpretation is so strong but the pulsating rock is superb, the album title song "Paranoid" is much more simple but therefor shows the magnificence of this work -an ideal rock piece: great riff, great verses and choruses, great melodic base-; in conclusion you've got really standout rock-heavy metal gems that work out perfectly as totally enjoyable breakthrough singles.

But to make "Paranoid" a timeless statement beyond styles and formulas, the rest of the tracks are simple and at the same time complicated-dark terrific numbers.

Sabbath goes for everything and unquestionably conquers all -oh, and on the way through sets a landmark work for ROCK and the biggest-most relevant-influential record of heavy metal.

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