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Rating:
Link between the psychedelia of the sixties (particularly Cream and Iron Butterfly), the hard progressive (early Uriah Heep), and the blues in its most radical forms, Black Sabbath infused their music with a probably unconscious revolution (and here lies the greatness of the band, in not creating anything premeditated) that would alter the roots of the hard sound and reflect in all future heavy metal. Something extremely innovative, the heavy equivalent of the dark-indie of the Velvet Underground from New York.
Even today, Paranoid is an authentic masterpiece, an album that makes Toni Iommi's complex and intricate experiments (surely the best living guitarist even today) a true cornerstone. It's not so much for the unforgettable riffs he creates (extraordinary is the lesson of the heavy-jazz of "Wicked World" in the previous, unrepeatable self-titled debut) but for the surprising ability to elevate sound forms that would create something even decades later. Isn't "Planet Caravan" (someone try to deny it) perhaps the first doom song in the history of rock music? My Dying Bride and Candlemass already resided here, even though no one could have known. Well, everyone knows "Paranoid," bass and drums are still lethal, even if today it has a strange effect, because it's a track that has been talked about too much... Rumore talks about a political album in the latest issue, and I think they are partly right: indeed the lyrics of "War Pigs" "generals gathered in their masses just like witches at black masses" inspired - it's said - by the Vietnam war leaves no room for doubt. Rather, doubts should return to those who have unjustly associated Ozzy & Co: with grand guignol and a taste for the macabre.
If the personal vicissitudes of Ozzy or Bill Ward have not highlighted identities too clear from a rational perspective, that's their business: utmost respect even for their emotional breakdowns, they were (and are) great artists. But the Black Sabbath lyrics actually combined the baroque-decadent fascination for English and non-English dark literature (from Lord Byron to Poe passing through Stevenson) with the threatening sense of "malevolent" everyday life of the present. They were, and are, lyrics of rare beauty, capable of unleashing all the pain and anguish of a world that can never (neither then nor now) fully express the best of itself. I also like to think that if Black Sabbath were taboo in the system, nowadays the themes of death have become practically a current affair, a reality that doesn't even evoke fear. But in the heavy-dark dimension of this album, we still find various surprises: like the vocoder voice of "Iron Man" or the splendid "Electric Funeral," but above all, it is like a litanic prophecy for a humanity that perhaps does not fear for its individual fate but the end of its entire civilization, the unconfessable fear of not being able to save anything. Something that goes far beyond the music and the cover, with that temporal ecstasy of a weapon that wickedly redeems the vocation of man of every era: a "Black Sabbath" that acts inside and outside of us...
Tracklist Lyrics and Samples
02 Paranoid (02:49)
Finished with my woman
'Cause she couldn't help me with my mind
People think I'm insane
Because I am frowning all the time
All day long I think of things
But nothing seems to satisfy
Think I'll lose my mind
If I don't find something to pacify
Can you help me
Occupy my brain?
Oh yeah
I need someone to show me
The things in life that I can't find
I can't see the things that make true happiness
I must be blind
Make a joke and I will sigh
And you will laugh and I will cry
Happiness I cannot feel
And love to me is so unreal
And so as you hear these words
Telling you now of my state
I tell you to enjoy life
I wish I could but it's too late
03 Planet Caravan (04:25)
We sail through endless skies
Stars shine like eyes
The black night sighs
The moon in silver dreams
Falls down in beams
Light of the night
The Earth a purple blaze
Of sapphire haze
In orbit always
While down below the trees
Bathed in cool breeze
Silver starlight
Breaks dawn from night
And so we pass on by
The crimson eye
Of great god Mars
As we travel the universe
04 Iron Man (05:55)
Has he lost his mind
Can he see or is he blind
Can he walk at all
Or if he moves will he fall
Is he alive or dead
Has he thoughts within his head
We'll just pass him there
Why should we even care
He was turned to steel
In the great magnetic field
When he traveled time
For the future of mankind
Nobody wants him
He just stares at the world
Planning his vengeance
That he will soon unfurl
Now the time is here
For Iron Man to spread fear
Vengeance from the grave
Kills the people he once saved
Nobody wants him
They just turn their heads
Nobody helps him
Now he has his revenge
Heavy boots of lead
Fills his victims full of dread
Running as fast as they can
Iron Man lives again!
05 Electric Funeral (04:49)
Reflex in the sky
Warn you you're gonna die
Storm coming, you'd better hide
From the atomic tide
Flashes in the sky
Turns houses into sty
Turns people into clay
Radiation minds decay
Robot minds of robot slaves
Lead them to atomic graves
Plastic flowers, melting sun
Fading moon falls apart
Dying world of radiation,
Victims of mad frustration
Burning globe of obscene fire
Like electric funeral pyre
Buildings crashing down
To Earth's cracking ground
Rivers turn to wood
Ice melts into blood
Earth lies in debris
Clouds cry for the dead
Terrifying rain
Ease the burning pain
Electric Funeral
Electric Funeral
Electric Funeral
Electric Funeral
And so in the sky
Shines the electric eye
Supernatural king
Takes Earth under his wing
Heaven's golden chorus sings
Hell's angels flap their wings
Evil souls fall to Hell
Ever trapped in burning cells!
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Other reviews
By 2+2=5
Every seed of what the Heavy scene would become from 1970 to today is here.
War Pigs, Paranoid, Iron Man: an encyclopedia from which no artist belonging to any fringe of the Heavy-Rock scene can deny having drawn.
By Axlspark
"To highlight the greatness of this band among many successes and masterpieces, there is an album, certainly the greatest of Black Sabbath: 'Paranoid'."
"Giving 5 stars to this album seemed like an insult because the actual score it deserves is 10 with honors."
By kain3325
With 'Paranoid' Black Sabbath are at the peak of their creativity, pioneers of a genre that will see them on altars for many years.
The opening track is War Pigs, an incandescent riff by Iommy that turns into a pounding song punctuated by Ward’s snare drum and Osborne’s increasingly hypnotic voice.
By Battlegods
"Black Sabbath can be defined as the founders of doom, dark, and evil sounds which were later adopted in the metal of the eighties."
"The album is a beautiful lesson of true hard rock, still today!"
By Nesci
"'Paranoid' is the album of fame, the one that definitively consolidated Sabbath’s success."
"'War Pigs' is an immortal classic, with an unforgettable riff and a desperate cry against war shouted in Sabbath’s very particular style."
