Review Summary: The seeds of the metal genre are sown with Black Sabbath's sophomore album, which exhibits not only enormous musical growth from their first album, but a superb lineup of iconic tracks which continue to withstand the test of time.
Paranoid was probably my first foray into the heavier side of rock and the album itself plays like a Best of Black Sabbath compilation, yet is their amazingly well-balanced second studio album and is truly astounding in its growth from their first. Casual listeners will recognize catchy, yet complex tracks like ‘Iron Man’ and ‘Paranoid,’ but the album boasts a range of ambitious, dark, and heavy tracks such as ‘War Pigs,’ ‘Hand of Doom,’ and ‘Electric Funeral.’
The instrumentation and overall sound of the album is said to have provided the heavy metal genre with much of its early direction, and has influenced a great number of bands who have followed. The lyrics explored the darker side of the Counterculture era, going beyond the mainstream anti-war folk songs of the likes of Donovan and Phil Ochs, and instead tackling themes relating to heavy drug use, the Cold War (and its persistent threat of nuclear annihilation), and mental illness through tracks with almost oppressive weight and complex guitar work. These were songs that not only had a message to communicate lyrically, but musically as well, portraying the frightening (for the time) sounds of dissonant, fiery electric guitars; steadily thumping, then unexpectedly chaotic, drumming; and the alternately dirge-like then jazzy bass notes. Combined with the muddled recording style, which lent an air of odd quietude in between the explosions of powerful sound, the instrumentation easily lent this album the ability to vividly evoke images of death, destruction, and nuclear funeral pyres even if it were devoid of the lyrics speaking to that very issue.
Speaking of the lyrics, these were the days when Ozzy Osborne could still be understood when he spoke/sang, and accompanying his peculiar, somewhat-nasal, British-accented tones, was Tony Iommi, when he was undeniably one of the most talented guitarists in the business (even missing two of his fingertips). Together with Geezer Butler on bass and Bill Ward on drums, they produced an album with amazing range and a sound so innovative that if it didn't sow many of the seeds of the metal genre, at least it helped nurture that budding sapling in its formative years.
From the first moments of ‘War Pigs,’ with its funereally slow bass slaps and cyclical guitar part, the album’s mood seems set, but then the distant wail of a siren comes in, rising in amplitude, edging ever closer until … the bass, the light drumming, and the siren stop and it’s just a two-note, powerfully loud guitar riff catching the listener by surprise, and then off balance as it’s joined with the slight tapping of the hi-hat. And this dichotomy propels the listener forward into the Ozzy's lyrics, which go right for the dark imagery with the first lines (and their awkward “rhyming” scheme): “Generals gathered in their masses, / Just like witches at black masses.” The track cycles through emphasis on the multiple instruments, at one moment silencing the ever-present guitar to bring a quick, complex drum burst up front, but then coming back to the ever-versatile Iommi for a finger-dancingly fusillade on the ax. Following this track, many will recognize the persistent, dance-hall beat of ‘Paranoid,’ a track whose massive popularity was a surprise to the band, who wrote it in about half an hour, with the Iommi guitar part as the clear backbone – a fact which is evident in this track, as it boasts little beyond that riff. However, many will be surprised at hearing the ethereal, floating sounds of ‘Planet Caravan’ and the dreamy, psychedelic instruments which populate it – bongos and mellow guitar tuning certainly aren’t in the purview of what one thinks when they envision a metal band. But, ‘Iron Man’ sure as hell is, with one of the most identifiable guitar riffs in the entirety of metal, perhaps all of modern rock, and the heavy instrumentation and literally metallic visions dreamed up in the lyrics pound this heavy, clunking, automaton of a message home.
Paranoid is not perfect (no album really is), and sometimes the little things can bring the overall impression of certain tracks down the slightest of notches from where they could have been: the glaring contrast in instrument volume in the separate sections of ‘Hand of Doom’ and ‘War Pigs’ (perhaps due more to the recording style than anything else); the over-exuberant drum solo on the instrumental ‘Rat Salad’ which comes off as more of a frenzied flail than a well-considered rhythmic necessity; the oddities of the vocals at certain points, including the end of ‘Electric Funeral’ where a frog-like second voice comes in to repeat the track’s title over and over. However, these are trifles when it comes to the colossal leaps the band engendered in this album on the whole, reaching heights they had not even dared to before, and seemed to have considerable difficulty attaining again later. The primal urge and oppressive gloom of the vocals, and the utterly nontraditional, even violent, instrumentation lent many of its tracks instant immortality in the hallowed halls of rock, and as an album, it constitutes much of the root system for the genre which became the great sequoia that is now heavy metal. Yet it continues to stand under the great weight of that history which has been placed upon its myriad branches – having burst onto the scene in the UK, almost forty years ago, with an unexpected outpouring of popularity, shoving it to the front of the charts as if borne upon the arms of a pushing crowd of frightened Britons, looking for a new sound which mirrored their pent-up frustrations and daily dread of extermination by the ever-present threat of nuclear fire. And from those powerful beginnings the impact of this album has not let up, leaving us in a world where there are few who do not recognize the stomping opening sounds of ‘Iron Man;’ but alas there are now fewer who appreciate its original, countercultural intent and its revolutionary impact on the musical world.
