Let’s go on a ledge: Black Sabbath might be the most influential band of our lifetime, the band that introduced what we think of as heaviness and wrote albums that will never be matched, much less copied. If Sabbath did anything, it was save our lives. That’s the riddle of Sabbath a song like “War Pigs” can unite a stadium and create a makeshift family.įor most of the fans who loved Sabbath the T-shirt that read “Black Sabbath Ruined My Life” was the ultimate inside joke. It also made - and makes - you feel completely alive. Their music allows you to confront your primal fears and, in the course of listening, transcend them. Whereas blues offered a respite and a vacation from the dark night of the soul, Sabbath offered a trip to its heart. Sabbath wrested rock away from saccharine producers, naïve hippies, and idealists, and gave it back to the folks that inspired blues music: the lonely, the desperate, the fucked-up, and the hopeless. In the course of their long career (44 years and counting), Black Sabbath altered the sound of music, became a cornerstone for every teenager who didn’t fit in and, in the process, redefined what was possible in rock. Black Sabbath, a band once filleted by rock critics like Lester Bangs and targeted by generations of parents for allegedly ruining their children’s lives, did. The Beach Boys and visionary writer and producer Brian Wilson didn’t do it. The work of Egyptian artist Tarek Abelkawi, it’s adorned with etchings of the individual band members’ faces and their signatures.Few bands can claim to have invented an entire genre of music. Dubai-based architect and Black Sabbath super fan Mohammed Osama led the campaign for the commemorative bench, which is literally made of heavy metal. Birmingham credits musical pioneers such as Black Sabbath with helping raise the cultural profile of the city and surrounding borough. In 2019, through a joint effort between the Westside Business Improvement District, the Canal and River Trust, and Birmingham City Council, the city honored Black Sabbath by naming a bridge after the group and installing a bench in their honor. Soon, heavy metal spread across the Atlantic to America, and eventually throughout the world.ĭecades later, despite what critics predicted, heavy metal still rules. The genre now dubbed “heavy metal” inspired like-minded bands throughout the U.K. While the dark aesthetic of Black Sabbath frightened many parents, clergy, and moral crusaders, the band spearheaded a new musical movement that quickly gained momentum. The song “Black Sabbath” had occult-influenced lyrics and opened with a sinister-sounding musical interval known as the devil’s tritone. “War Pigs,” a song protesting the Vietnam War, compared militarists to devil worshippers. While many of the era’s rock acts clung to the hippy aesthetic and sang about peace and love, Black Sabbath delved into darker material. Named after a horror film starring Boris Karloff, Black Sabbath united Birmingham locals Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward. From this environment arose a quartet of musicians whose artistic vision would influence bands for decades. The loud, metallic noises vibrated throughout nearby neighborhoods. The working class toiled away in factories with heavy machinery. Amid rubble that lingered from the Blitz bombings of World War II, giant smokestacks emitted black clouds over the city. Late 1960s Birmingham, England, was a rather bleak place to live.
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