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What people forget about Black Sabbath—and it's understandable given their demonic imagery and All Hallow's Eve vibe—was that it was one of the most God-driven, puritanical, wet-blanket rock bands in history. Its "mankind is evil and must repent for its wicked ways" thesis would influence almost all the future bards of the metallic arts. On their second and supremely heavy album Paranoid, there are laments on the destruction of war and the hypocrisy of politicians ("Electric Funeral" and "War Pigs"), the perils of technology ("Iron Man"), the perils of drug abuse ("Hand of Doom"), and the perils of mythical creatures and their choice of footwear ("Fairies Wear Boots"). On "Hand of Doom," Geezer Butler's subatomic bass, Ozzy Osbourne's tortured bullfrog yelp, Bill Ward's smack-you-in-the-face drums, and Tony Iommi's fuzz guitar lead mesh seamlessly into something so unholy and beautiful that it would take lesser bands years of back-to-the-drawing-board grunt work to achieve such badassed symmetry.
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Paranoid was not only Black Sabbath's most popular record (it was a number one smash in the U.K., and "Paranoid" and "Iron Man" both scraped the U.S. charts despite virtually nonexistent radio play), it also stands as one of the greatest and most influential heavy metal albums of all time. Paranoid refined Black Sabbath's signature sound -- crushingly loud, minor-key dirges loosely based on heavy blues-rock -- and applied it to a newly consistent set of songs with utterly memorable riffs, most of which now rank as all-time metal classics. Where the extended, multi-sectioned songs on the debut sometimes felt like aimless jams, their counterparts on Paranoid have been given focus and direction, lending an epic drama to now-standards like "War Pigs" and "Iron Man" (which sports one of the most immediately identifiable riffs in metal history). The subject matter is unrelentingly, obsessively dark, covering both supernatural/sci-fi horrors and the real-life traumas of death, war, nuclear annihilation, mental illness, drug hallucinations, and narcotic abuse. Yet Sabbath makes it totally convincing, thanks to the crawling, muddled bleakness and bad-trip depression evoked so frighteningly well by their music. Even the qualities that made critics deplore the album (and the group) for years increase the overall effect -- the technical simplicity of Ozzy Osbourne's vocals and Tony Iommi's lead guitar vocabulary; the spots when the lyrics sink into melodrama or awkwardness; the lack of subtlety and the infrequent dynamic contrast. Everything adds up to more than the sum of its parts, as though the anxieties behind the music simply demanded that the band achieve catharsis by steamrolling everything in its path, including its own limitations. Monolithic and primally powerful, Paranoid defined the sound and style of heavy metal more than any other record in rock history.
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