The pouring rain, howling wind and ominous sound of thunder. The tolling bell and that doomy, oppressive riff. Ozzy Osbourne’s stark, terrified howl: “What is this that stands before me?” Few songs are as memorable as Black Sabbath’s Black Sabbath, the track which opened their landmark 1970 debut album.
That song, and the album from which it was taken, are rightly credited as helping lay the foundations for heavy metal – not just sonically but aesthetically too. Sabbath were bleaker and more malevolent than anything that had come before them. With their creepy, horror-movie atmospherics and references to Satan, these four working class kids from Birmingham were seemingly playing with dark forces. Metal wasn’t even in its infancy, but its obsession with the occult was already in place.
