Black Sabbath
Between Heaven and Hell

Driven by nostalgia, today I might be writing the most useless review in the history of Debaser, useless for you, but in its own small way, the most important in my existence. I don't know who I would be today, probably the same mess as always, but different in many ways if by chance my ears hadn't been enchanted by this album; a compilation to be exact, the only compilation I've ever owned.

Back then, it should have been the early nineties, I was in middle school, I didn't have a CD player, I didn't even have my beloved record player, I only had a cassette player that paradoxically alternated between disco tapes and my sister's Led Zeppelin tapes. The lamest of my classmates one day showed up at my house with an original MC of a group I had never heard of, given by his uncle for his birthday. Black Sabbath, I had no idea what "Sabbath" meant and I didn't really care, but that "Black", without having listened to the work, had already begun to change the metabolism of my brain. I was young, stupid, and immature and a part of me was almost scared, that music was evil...

Pressing play, I had the sensation that either the cassette or the stereo was spoiled, the same as when you put a 45 RPM record on 33 RPM mode. So dark, blasphemous, and sulfurous. It didn't take long to realize that nothing was broken, it was the music of Black Sabbath, death passed along my spine, and I got goosebumps, something that with music, in the future, I would never feel so intensely again.

Days and days, months and months listening to this tape, nothing else, all the rubbish music placed on the shelf in my room ended up first in the basement, then in the trash, the Black Sabbath were something superior and I with the volume cranked up in the small room would jump and pretend to play the guitar with the school ruler. "Into the Void" I remember was one of my favorites, "War Pigs", "The Dark", "N.I.B.", I absolutely listened to everything from top to bottom without trying to compare and without judging, I didn't know the names of the members, who the hell was "Ozzy", I didn't care to understand I just wanted to listen, indifferent to the fact that song after song even the singers changed. Like a madman, I preferred staying home with their music rather than going out with friends. And it was useless trying to make my classmates feel the same love I had for that tape, but at the same time, I was happy, I felt like one of the chosen few, I was different and this only increased my self-esteem, thus began my "marginalization" from society, I was "superior" the others were not...

I repeat: I was young and stupid. And when finally the first CD player arrived at my home, I sought nothing but this record, buying it and continuing to listen to it until madness ensued. 

Here what others take as a useless "Greatest Hits", which in the history of Black Sabbath counts for little, changed my life (I don't know if for better or worse). But for obvious emotional ties, when it resurfaces from the cupboard along with all the other CDs, I can't help but listen to it again, loaded with old memories, and even today I thank it for "saving" me.

I'm sure that like me, almost all of you have had a similar story, naturally with other records and other artists, so you can well understand how unreliable a rating would be for all of this...