Then, with Volume 4 (1972) when they hit the big money and the cocaine, the sound becomes a lot less gothic and a lot “sunnier”. As the albums progress there is at first a simplistic sound and a simple message of good and evil. This passage of decline and destruction did produce a very interesting passage of lyrical thought, however. The last two Ozzie albums are so poorly produced because they were all totally drug-fucked, and Bill Ward and Toni Iommi end up doing much of the singing quite simply because Ozzie was too stuffed to be able to. After the first four albums they hindered them totally. And boy did they really hit the drugs, in a mythical sense that only seemed possible in the 1970s and which these days no longer seems to exist in the land of rock and roll. This took place as Sabbath increasingly slid into what they had originally thought of as the bad drugs – heroin particularly. It’s that as Sabbath musically and lyrically involved, there was a tendency to hypertrophy the ego and to conflate God and the Devil in order to overcome him as a kind of domineering tyrant. Sabbath is full of it, a cosmological war between the powers of good and evil. And indeed one of the things often missing from a great deal of “nice” Christian rock is spiritual struggle. Not their best? Perhaps, but certainly a bit more fun than Stryper or all that terrible Christian rock that sounds like Nickelback. Or will you still jeer at all you hear, yes I think it’s too late.” The only one who can save you now from all this sin and hate Open your eyes, just realize that he’s the one Perhaps you’ll think before you say that God is dead and gone You had the chance but you turned it down, now you can’t retrieve Will you be so sure when your day is near, say you don’t believe? I think it is sad the opinion you had was the only one voiced I think it was true it was people like you that crucified Christ Is your mind so small that you have to fall In with the pack wherever they runĪnd say they may as well worship the sun? They should realize before they criticize Well I have seen the truth, yes I’ve seen the light and I’ve changed my waysĪnd I’ll be prepared when you’re lonely and scared at the end of our daysĬould it be you’re afraid of what your friends might say Would you like to see the Pope on the end of a rope do you think he’s a fool? When you think about death do you lose your breath or do you keep your cool? Is Christ just a name that you read in a book when you were in school? Is God just a thought within your head or is he a part of you? Or perhaps you think that when you’re dead you just stay in your grave “Have you ever thought about your soul can it be saved? The fact is that “After Forever”, the second track of Sabbath’s third album, Master of Reality (1971), may well be one of the first “Christian rock” tracks ever, and is often overlooked. He sits there smiling as the flames get higher he laughing spreads his wings over the world as it is engulfed in war. Satan is “bad” drugs (heroin), war and hatred, which can only be fought with love, or escape from the Earth into space. The Devil is always the baddie, the “Lord of This World”, “he’s your confessor now” (which Geezer claims to Clerk is their only real “Satan song”). If one is not familiar with Sabbath, one might think that they are Satanists or something. I’ll be borrowing quite liberally from Carol Clerk’s Diary of a Madman: Ozzy Osbourne, The Stories Behind the Songs (Thunder’s Mouth Press, New York, 2002). This may sound very surprising, but I can admit that the idea is not entirely original. Definitely not the coolest stuff, which Geezer and then Bob Daisley (another bass player) mostly wrote for him to sing.Īnyway, here I’m going to talk about something a little odd here, the Gnostic Christianity embedded as a sort of evolving narrative over the first six Sabbath albums. “Who Are You” off Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and “Shot in the Dark” off The Ultimate Sin are two examples of the songs he is credited with having written over the years. Ozzie is and always has been a terrible song writer. Also many people seem to think that Ozzy wrote the lyrics for some odd reason. But with Sabbath I love just about every microsecond of those first six albums – but especially the lyrics. Most of the music I really love, I love because of the sound of it, not because of the lyrics. All the ingredients are marvellous, from wail of the young Ozzie Osborne, to the endlessly inventive riffing of Toni Iommi, but Geezer Butler’s lyrics take the cake. I’ve always loved the music of British heavy metal band Black Sabbath, especially their first six albums. This is just going to be a fun little post.
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