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The Black Widow weaves her web in the darkness.
Thin threads like silver paths on the road to nightmare. Simple lines of acoustic guitar, winds, and Hammond, inviting and captivating: you follow them because the desire to discover what lies at the center of the web is too strong. There, a seductive and gentle voice awaits you, taking you by the hand to guide you to a place that, it promises, will be warm and safe. It's only when the spider opens its jaws that you discover that place is hell.
The music of Black Widow is a painting made of a few strokes of black pencil, light and shaded, where magical and ancestral figures take shape, remnants of a time and place that perhaps never existed.
It is a journey through the dreamlike distortions of the creator and mentor, Jim Gannon, a young guitarist from Leicester who, around the second half of the '60s, managed to gather around him a group of musicians capable of sublimating in sound his almost obsessive interest in occult themes, mystery, and, let's not hide it, Satanism.
"Sacrifice," released in 1970, just a few months after the Black Sabbath's debut record, is perhaps the most beautiful of his nightmares, the most vivid of his decadent frescoes. It is set against the melodies of Clive Jones (flute, sax, and clarinet) and Zoot Taylor (Hammond and piano), visionary and enveloping. Now soft and impalpable like whisps of fog, now dense and suffocating like furnaces, they are the most progressive face of the Black Widow sound: brush strokes that do not define the contours but rather confuse and distort them, curls of sounds and notes sometimes with an almost "liturgical" flavor ("Sacrifice"), brilliant in allowing themselves instrumental diversions sometimes languid and sunny, of Frippian memory, as a backdrop to nightmares and demonic apparitions ("Seduction").
In the foreground is a malevolent elf dancing around the fire. It is the voice of Kip Trevor, the most insidious of the traps hidden in the web. Proud, yet cordial, he seems to want to tell of a dream that remains in his eyes, of a story not yet escaped from his head... You almost cringe as you discover him singing of lost civilizations, of ancient Babylons ("In Ancient Days"), of demons and men in their service, of rituals lost in the mists of time, and of fingers stained with blood...
You seem to see it, the circle of souls holding hands. You see them dancing entranced to what seems little more than a nursery rhyme ("Come To The Sabbat"), you follow them across fields and forests illuminated by the moonlight, you let yourself be hypnotized by the pulsing of primordial drums. And then all goes silent. Until the souls turn to look at you, they call to you ("come, come, come to the sabbat... satan's there"), they become insistent, hallucinatory, the circle becomes a spiral, a vortex dragging you downward... and the sacrifice begins.
The beauty of "Sacrifice" lies entirely in the chiaroscuro, in the contrasts. In the ability to evoke vivid images, to astonish the listener with brilliant insights, real coupe de theatre, in a sort of "latent wickedness" that seems to pervade music that, in itself, might seem harmless. Perhaps not on par with many masterpieces of the period, neither for originality of sound nor for the taste of experimentation, it remains a small black gem of folk rock, with intense progressive veins, with the merit of having attempted (paving the way for many bands that still try today), to give a sonic dress to the occult, to visions, and to nightmares. It is music that attempts to strike the listener from behind: deceiving them with its immediacy, with the calmness of tones and sounds, only to disrupt their certainties, should one delve beyond the notes.
It's a dark fairy tale that few know: simple and with an uncertain happy ending... and, perhaps for this very reason, even more beautiful to listen to.
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
03 Come to the Sabbat (04:55)
Help me in my search for knowledge,
I must learn the Secret Art.
Who dares to help me raise the one
Whose very name near stills my heart?
ASTAROTH
Discard your clothes and come on foot,
Through streams and fields and moonlit moors,
Your bodies soaked in secret oils,
Perfumed herbs will heal your sores.
Join me in my search for power.
Wives and husbands bring your kin.
We'll be as one within the hour.
Let the Sabbat now begin.
Come, come, come to the Sabbat.
Come to the Sabbat - Satan's there!
Come, come, come to the Sabbat.
Come to the Sabbat - Satan's there!
Come, come, come to the Sabbat.
Come to the Sabbat - Satan's there!
Come, come, come to the Sabbat.
Come to the Sabbat - Satan's there!
Come, come, come to the Sabbat.
Come to the Sabbat - Satan's there!
Come, come, come to the Sabbat.
Come to the Sabbat - Satan's there!
Come, come, come to the Sabbat.
Come to the Sabbat - Satan's there!
Come, come, come to the Sabbat.
Come to the Sabbat - Satan's there!
Discard your clothes and come on foot,
Through streams and fields and moonlit moors,
Your bodies soaked in secret oils,
Perfumed herbs will heal your sores.
Join me in my search for power.
Wives and husbands bring your kin.
We'll be as one within the hour.
Let the Sabbat now begin.
Come, come, come to the Sabbat.
Come to the Sabbat - Satan's there!
Come, come, come to the Sabbat.
Come to the Sabbat - Satan's there!
Come, come, come to the Sabbat.
Come to the Sabbat - Satan's there!
Come, come, come to the Sabbat.
Come to the Sabbat - Satan's there!
Come, come, come to the Sabbat.
Come to the Sabbat - Satan's there!
Come, come, come to the Sabbat.
Come to the Sabbat - Satan's there!
Come, come, come to the Sabbat.
Come to the Sabbat - Satan's there!
Come, come, come to the Sabbat.
Come to the Sabbat - Satan's there!
Come, come, come to the Sabbat.
Come to the Sabbat - Satan's there!
Come, come, come to the Sabbat.
Come to the Sabbat - Satan's there!
Come, come, come to the Sabbat.
Come to the Sabbat - Satan's there!
Come, come, come to the Sabbat.
Come to the Sabbat - Satan's there!
Help me in my search for knowledge,
I must learn the Secret Art.
Who dares to help me raise the one
Whose very name near stills my heart?
ASTAROTH
04 Conjuration (05:45)
Can it be the voice I heard,
borne on the wind, to reach my ears,
came from the lips,
I learned so well in other lives.
I swear that I will kill my fear,
perform the rites and swear on,
by me knee to help the one, I loved before.
I even steel my heart, to raise the devil himself.
In this secret place I stand,
unused for countless years,
to make my dream come true,
I call the lady Astarath come join me here.
Time has come, the power is raised,
the wind brings voices to my ears,
believe her faith the voices say,
have confidence the time is almost right.
06 Attack of the Demon (05:37)
You plead again for rich rewards,
[that] steaks your blood your mind your soul.
You try to gain all earthly power,
You unleashed plagues of famine, death and war.
All my sins have damned my soul in hell.
All off my sins have locked me in hell. (x4)
I try to turn my heart against the wickedness I wrote,
and in my dream my dear beloved mother came to me.
She beg me turn my face ones more up high toward the lord.
But notice came I could not weep, but Satan clutched my heart.
All my sins have damned my soul in hell.
All off my sins have locked me in hell. (x4)
07 Sacrifice (11:08)
A Sacrifice, a sacrifice,
you say you wanna sacrifice.
You say the words to easily,
to know just what you mean.
One black hand and one white hand,
I slaughtered with your knife.
I know full well you have a loss,
a thing to match their blood
The sacrificial knife is stained with [...]
and held on hair,
the blood is mixed within the cup,
and drunk by all who watch.
You [...] a power [...] touch.
You'll never get to power just by playing nasty games.
A sacrifice, a sacrifice ...
One black hand ...
When I crossed the abyss two thousand years ago,
I never even dream so many power I would reach.
Till the point on my knife reached my lovers silken throat,
the only thing I'd sacrificed have been my fathers' sheep.
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Other reviews
By TomTomCrimson
They officiated real rituals during their concerts, complete with sacrifices.
'Sacrifice' is a masterful display of skill on an overwhelming rhythm, creating atmospheres both unsettling and energetic.
