With 1973's Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, heavy metal godfathers Black Sabbath made a concerted effort to prove their remaining critics wrong by raising their creative stakes and dispensing unprecedented attention to the album's production standards, arrangements, and even the cover artwork. As a result, bold new efforts like the timeless title track, "A National Acrobat," and "Killing Yourself to Live" positively glistened with a newfound level of finesse and maturity, while remaining largely faithful, aesthetically speaking, to the band's signature compositional style. In fact, their sheer songwriting excellence may even have helped to ease the transition for suspicious older fans left yearning for the rough-hewn, brute strength that had made recent triumphs like Master of Reality and Vol. 4 (really, all their previous albums) such undeniable forces of nature. But thanks to Sabbath Bloody Sabbath's nearly flawless execution, even a more adventurous experiment like the string-laden "Spiral Architect," with its tasteful background orchestration, managed to sound surprisingly natural, and in the dreamy instrumental "Fluff," Tony Iommi scored his first truly memorable solo piece. If anything, only the group's at times heavy-handed adoption of synthesizers met with inconsistent consequences, with erstwhile Yes keyboard wizard Rick Wakeman bringing only good things to the memorable "Sabbra Cadabra" (who know he was such a great boogie-woogie pianist?), while the robotically dull "Who Are You" definitely suffered from synthesizer novelty overkill. All things considered, though, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath was arguably Black Sabbath's fifth masterpiece in four years, and remains an essential item in any heavy metal collection.

From Rolling Stone: FEBRUARY 13, 1974
Though they are best known as the planet's premier heavy-metal band, Black Sabbath's major contribution has been to successfully capture the gist of specifically Seventies culture through their music. They relate to this impersonal, mechanical decade much as Delta bluesmen and their Chicago spin-offs related to their eras — by synthesizing collective feelings and giving their contemporaries hope by revealing the disaffection that units all of them. In that remote but real sense, Black Sabbath might well be considered true Seventies bluesmen.

Many will no doubt laugh, but I can think of no other group that has so consistently spoken in the musical language of its times. The power chord, that brief but brutal third-generation staple, has always been Sabbath's major medium, the aural twin of the metallic age surrounding us. And, as such technical advances as the mellotron and Moog have risen to the musical fore, they've been incorporated into Sabbath's sonic setting, the computerized musical counterparts of a cold, programmed world.

But it's Sabbath's lyrics that have been the instant conveyor of their message, accompanying a dedicated cadre through a multiplicity of emotions and worldly experiences. Ossie Osbourne possesses an eternal teenager's tones, voicing the vicarious existence of youth "lost in the wheels of confusion." On songs like "Iron Man," "Wicked World" and "Children of the Grave" he's blended with the band in a well-nigh perfect vocal/instrumental portrayal of the violently schizophrenic emotions of the ostracized elite, riddled with ridicule for their latter-day Cassandrian visions.

Through drugs ("Sweet Leaf" and "Snowblind") and religion ("After Forever") Sabbath have stayed with the quest for an answer, culminating their search in such heavy-metal odes as "Into The Void" and the spectacular "Supernaut," the latter revealing in its final verse their belief that sanity is assured only through dogged belief in one's self to the exclusion of all else.

Which brings us to Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath, on which the band both fully accepts this dictum and grows comfortable with it. Through enough solid heavy-metal to satisfy even the staunchest metallurgist ("Sabbra Cadabra," "Looking For Today" and the title tune lie firmly within the band's accustomed format — a logical extension of the Who's classic mid-Sixties formula) they search for peace in the eye of the hurricane of life. In fact, this record transcends third-generation rock in that it possesses a degree of internal intricacy that belies popular conceptions of heavy-metal. The use of tempo changes and electronic keyboards to cast liquid emotions makes Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath an extraordinarily gripping affair.

"The blues oughtta make you wanna cry one minute, and make you wanna get up and dance the next." That's what Black Sabbath have always done for this believer, and in doing it again, Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath is nothing less than a complete success. Call it the blues of the decade, or heavy-metal — whatever the name for their music, Black Sabbath are a true Seventies band.

Changes - This is like ground zero for the power ballad. How the christ does 'Dream On' get that tag?! Also, and this is a bit difficult to convey, but Ozzy really sounds like Ozzy here. Like this could appear on any of his 80s albums. Great vocals.

The simultaneous birth of Kiss and 80's hair metal.

what does this even mean?

Sabotage is the final release of Black Sabbath's legendary First Six, and it's also the least celebrated of the bunch, though most die-hard fans would consider it criminally underrated. The band continues further down the proto-prog metal road of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, and this time around, the synthesizers feel more organically integrated into the arrangements. What's more, the song structures generally feel less conventional and more challenging. There's one significant exception in the blatant pop tune "Am I Going Insane (Radio)," which rivals "Changes" as the most fan-loathed song of the glory years, thanks to its synth-driven arrangement (there isn't even a guitar riff!) and oft-repeated one-line chorus. But other than that song and the terrific album opener, "Hole in the Sky," the band largely eschews the standard verse-chorus format, sticking to one or two melody lines per riffed section and changing up the feel before things get too repetitive. The prevalence of this writing approach means that Sabotage rivals Vol. 4 as the least accessible record of Sabbath's glory years. However, given time, the compositional logic reveals itself, and most of the record will burn itself into the listener's brain just fine. The faster than usual "Symptom of the Universe" is a stone-cold classic, its sinister main riff sounding like the first seed from which the New Wave of British Heavy Metal would sprout (not to mention an obvious blueprint for Diamond Head's "Am I Evil?"). Like several songs on the record, "Symptom" features unexpected acoustic breaks and softer dynamics, yet never loses its drive or focus, and always feels like Sabbath. Less immediate but still rewarding are "Thrill of It All," with its triumphant final section, and the murky, sullen "Megalomania," which never feels as long as its nearly nine and a half minutes. But more than the compositions, the real revelation on Sabotage is Ozzy Osbourne, who turns in his finest vocal performance as a member of Black Sabbath. Really for the first time, this is the Ozzy we all know, displaying enough range, power, and confidence to foreshadow his hugely successful solo career. He saves the best for last with album closer "The Writ," one of the few Sabbath songs where his vocal lines are more memorable than Tony Iommi's guitar parts; running through several moods over the course of the song's eight minutes, it's one of the best performances of his career, bar none. Unfortunately, after Sabotage, the wheels of confusion came off entirely. Yes, there were technically two more albums, but for the non-obsessive, the story of Osbourne-era Sabbath effectively ends here.

Sabotage is not only Black Sabbath's best record since Paranoid, it might be their best ever. Even with the usual themes of death, destruction and mental illness running throughout this album, the unleashed frenzy and raw energy they've returned to here comes like a breath of fresh air.

"Symptom of the Universe" rambles on, an atonal riff-based crusher, then shifts for a coda of lightly paced acoustic jamming. "Megalomania" is an inversion of that, erupting into a hard rocker with a hummable chorus before it's slammed home in a quake of phasing and feedback. For diversion, there's "Supertzar," which features the English Chamber Choir chanting off an off-time splurge of guitar phrases. Black Sabbath loyalists will no doubt love this record and those who've never bothered may even want to indulge.