BLACK SABBATH DISCOGRAPHY RANKING GAME: #17 TIE revealed!

Mosh

Mosh

Powerslave
Staff member
Hello! Our next ranking game is a behemoth, the Metal grandfathers themselves: BLACK SABBATH.
This one is going to be a big undertaking, so if there are a bunch of albums you're not familiar with please don't let that put you off, I am going to keep a longer-than-normal submission time so that people can catch up on the back catalog if they want.

Here's how it works:
1: Each user will submit their rankings of the 20 Black Sabbath studio albums to me via PM. That's right, 20. All 19 studio albums PLUS the Heaven and Hell album, The Devil You Know. The top album will receive 20 points, the next album 19, all the way down to the last placed album that will receive 1 point.

2: I will tally up the results and create a forum-wide ranking.

3: I will reveal the results one album at a time, starting at #20. This will be a more discussion based affair, since there will be no voting at this point.

So if you would like to participate, PM me your Black Sabbath ranking from #1 (best) to #20 (worst). Any lists that ignore this format or don't include every Black Sabbath studio album will be ignored! Any comments to this post with rankings will also be ignored, they must be sent via PM and no revisions!

As I said before, Sabbath has a big discography and I would say at least a quarter of their albums have mostly been forgotten by everybody outside hardcore fans, so I am aiming for a February start time but am not attached. I will keep the submission period open pretty much as long as I need. If you know you want to submit a list but you need more time, just leave a comment.

I want to give folks plenty of notice to revisit any albums they want, but I also want to get as many lists as possible so that we can get a more interesting ranking. If there are albums that you're less familiar with but still want to submit a list, now is your time to revisit those albums. But also if you rank an album last because you don't know it that well, I'm also not going to reject your list. I would rather you participate than not!

The Black Sabbath discography for your reference:

Black Sabbath
Paranoid
Master of Reality
Volume 4
Sabotage
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
Technical Ecstasy
Never Say Die
Heaven and Hell
Mob Rules
Born Again
Seventh Star
The Eternal Idol
Headless Cross
Tyr
Dehumanizer
Cross Purposes
Forbidden
The Devil You Know
13
 
I have my favorites and of course I know what's the best one and the worst, but I want to check out some of them to put them in the right order into the list.
 
Quick update on this. I currently only have four Sabbath lists. No hurry on this at all, I mostly wanted to get this out there to give folks time to go through the discography if they want. I would like to get to at least ten lists before I actually start crunching numbers. if you're intending on sending a list eventually just let me know so that I can get a sense of how many to anticipate.
 
We are now up to 8 lists and I know there are at least three on the way. When I get the remaining lists that I am expecting I will probably be post a soft last call and start getting this show on the road.
 
I've sent my list as it is, I don't think I could manage to force myself to relisten to the Butler-less Sabbath records before Sunday, so I went a bit by memory there. Like you said, better to participate than not.

Anyway, my list is probably really predictable, I wonder if we'll get some spicy unique takes here.
 
Mosh said:
Hello! Our next ranking game is a behemoth, the Metal grandfathers themselves: BLACK SABBATH.
This one is going to be a big undertaking, so if there are a bunch of albums you're not familiar with please don't let that put you off, I am going to keep a longer-than-normal submission time so that people can catch up on the back catalog if they want.

Here's how it works:
1: Each user will submit their rankings of the 20 Black Sabbath studio albums to me via PM. That's right, 20. All 19 studio albums PLUS the Heaven and Hell album, The Devil You Know. The top album will receive 20 points, the next album 19, all the way down to the last placed album that will receive 1 point.

2: I will tally up the results and create a forum-wide ranking.

3: I will reveal the results one album at a time, starting at #20. This will be a more discussion based affair, since there will be no voting at this point.

So if you would like to participate, PM me your Black Sabbath ranking from #1 (best) to #20 (worst). Any lists that ignore this format or don't include every Black Sabbath studio album will be ignored! Any comments to this post with rankings will also be ignored, they must be sent via PM and no revisions!

As I said before, Sabbath has a big discography and I would say at least a quarter of their albums have mostly been forgotten by everybody outside hardcore fans, so I am aiming for a February start time but am not attached. I will keep the submission period open pretty much as long as I need. If you know you want to submit a list but you need more time, just leave a comment.

I want to give folks plenty of notice to revisit any albums they want, but I also want to get as many lists as possible so that we can get a more interesting ranking. If there are albums that you're less familiar with but still want to submit a list, now is your time to revisit those albums. But also if you rank an album last because you don't know it that well, I'm also not going to reject your list. I would rather you participate than not!

The Black Sabbath discography for your reference:
Geometry Dash Lite
Black Sabbath
Paranoid
Master of Reality
Volume 4
Sabotage
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
Technical Ecstasy
Never Say Die
Heaven and Hell
Mob Rules
Born Again
Seventh Star
The Eternal Idol
Headless Cross
Tyr
Dehumanizer
Cross Purposes
Forbidden
The Devil You Know
13
Click to expand...
For albums like Seventh Star or Forbidden, which I haven’t listened to in years, is it okay if I give them a quick revisit on YouTube or Spotify and then rank them based on that impression?
 
bonjovi said:
For albums like Seventh Star or Forbidden, which I haven’t listened to in years, is it okay if I give them a quick revisit on YouTube or Spotify and then rank them based on that impression?
Click to expand...
The first entry is coming tomorrow. If you can get it to me before tomorrow morning yes.
 
Thank you everybody for your patience. This took awhile, but I think with Sabbath's farewell show taking place the last weekend, now seems as good a time as any to take a bit of a retrospective look at Sabbath's worst to best. A catalog this big and varied is always challenging to rank, and looking at the "bigger picture" you see that each album in a respective era of Sabbath ends up getting rated pretty close together. With that being said, some of these were VERY close with the difference between rankings sometimes being just one to three points, so one more or one less list in this game would have resulted in a significantly different overall ranking. Despite this, there was only one tie, which we will get to soon.

Our next game will be DREAM THEATER, and we WILL include Parasomnia! Stay tuned for list solicitations somewhat soon.

I said that many of these were close, but I will say the #1 spot and the #20 spot were not particularly close. With that in mind, here is the start of our Sabbath ranking:

1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
6:
7:
8:
9:
10:
11:
12:
13:
14:
15:
16:
17:
18:
19:
20: Forbidden

Total points: 40
Highest score: 11 (@KidInTheDark666)
Lowest score: 1 (@Iron Osaka @MrKnickerbocker @Mosh @Spambot @Prowler)

To me this is appropriately ranked as Forbidden is the only Sabbath album with no redeeming qualities. Bad singing, bad songwriting, really cringeworthy attempts at keeping up with current musical trends, the list goes on. I would go even further and say it's among the worst albums that have shown up in this game. To the point where I'm actually surprised at some of the albums that were ranked below this one. I think it's fair and accurate to say that the lower quadrant of Sabbath albums are all pretty weak in their own ways, but each of those at least have a song or two that I like, while Forbidden has nothing. It's not even like a St Anger situation where the music is laughably bad, it just feels like the band has no real direction here and the music is missing the essence of what made Sabbath great and the through line that keeps the Sabbath sound identifiable despite many lineup changes and stylistic shifts: the riffs. The riffs on here are virtually non-existent. One of the great missteps, and an appropriately forgotten album.
 
Forbidden is truly terrible. As you’ve said, it has zero redeeming qualities. When not even Iommi can salvage a Sabbath record, you know it’s bottom the barrel.

Mosh said:
It's not even like a St Anger situation where the music is laughably bad, it just feels like the band has no real direction here and the music is missing the essence of what made Sabbath great and the through line that keeps the Sabbath sound identifiable despite many lineup changes and stylistic shifts: the riffs. The riffs on here are virtually non-existent. One of the great missteps, and an appropriately forgotten album.
Click to expand...
I think this says it all. St. Anger, despite being atrocious, is emotionally honest and at least tries to do something new. Forbidden is directionless, unmemorable and just a giant flop.
 
Mosh said:
To me this is appropriately ranked as Forbidden is the only Sabbath album with no redeeming qualities.
Click to expand...
MrKnickerbocker said:
As you’ve said, it has zero redeeming qualities.
Click to expand...
It does have one positive, which is “Kiss of Death”, a worthy finale to my favorite era of Black Sabbath’s history.

And “Rusty Angels” is alright, but otherwise this album is straight garbage. It’s the sonic equivalent of the results of chainsmoking every day for forty years. The most WTF moment in a band’s history full of WTF moments, although I still think that Aborted Again is worse.
 
I don't know if it's because I last heard the album via the '24 Iommi remix (and I certainly wasn't inclined to go and check the differences with the original one), but I don't find the album as atrocious as others do, at least it doesn't stand out that much to me in the Martin and Hughes eras. I like the doomy opener Illusion of Power and - after the terrible intro is over - Can't Get Close Enough does regurgitate Megalomania in a way, so it's at least somewhat fun. Guilty as Hell sounds like Foreigner doing a Sabbath tribute (that's actually not a wholly inaccurate description for several of the songs here, courtesy of Martin on the vocals, I guess) and I don't really need that, but the main riff is at least somewhat lively. The attempt and Tullica-structured ballad Kiss of Death is laudable and Rusty Angels and the title track, while both peppering the unholy Foreigner/Sabbath union with a healthy dose of Whitesnake for good measure (talk about Devil's threesome, lol) are... memorable at least. Maybe even somewhat enjoyable.

Considering the dislike the album gets here, I suppose my most controversial take is going to be ranking this one right above Headless Cross, but 1. as I've said, the Martin era (or rather the Butless era) is mostly on the same level to me, 2. Forbidden does have a more palatable sound, being less drenched in the atrocious 80s production and 3. Forbidden works as a background music for me, whereas HC bores me to tears.

Also, I like the album art, reminds me of my days playing Heretic and Hexen as a kid, lol.
 
Last edited:
JudasMyGuide said:
Considering the dislike the album gets here, I suppose my most controversial take is going to be ranking this one right above Headless Cross, but 1. as I've said, the Martin era (or rather the Butless era) is mostly on the same level to me, 2. Forbidden does have a more palatable sound, being less drenched in the atrocious 80s production and 3. Forbidden works as a background music for me, whereas HC bores me to tears.
Click to expand...
This is it guys. We've finally found the worst take from Judas.

:ninja:
 
Diesel 11 said:
This is it guys. We've finally found the worst take from Judas.

:ninja:
Click to expand...

Weeeell, I didn't use to be the one to say "slap some cheese on top of it and an American's going to like it", but if Headless Cross is gonna end up this high on the list/fiercely defended...

:ninja:
 
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
6:
7:
8:
9:
10:
11:
12:
13:
14:
15:
16:
17:
18:
19: Never Say Die!
20: Forbidden

Total points: 73
Highest score: 20 (@Jeffmetal)
Lowest score: 2 (@Night Prowler @KidInTheDark666)

The placement of what was, until 2013, the last Sabbath album with Ozzy, came as a bit of a surprise to me. I know there is not a lot of love for this album, but the presence of songs like Shock Wave and the should-be FM staple title track immediately clears this album against at least three or four others, including one other with Ozzy on vocals. The album's low ranking also brings up some statistic oddities in this list, which I normally bring up in the first post but forgot about this time around so I'll bring them up now.

Never Say Die(!) is the lowest rated Ozzy album, but it sits in an interesting place as being one of only three Ozzy era albums that were ranked #1 on at least one list. Can you name the other two? This isn't to say that Ozzy's albums were ranked low, however. Only one Ozzy era Sabbath album finished last place on any list. Can you name it?

Only one album was ranked first place on one given list and last place on another, can you name that album (hint: it's not an Ozzy album)?

Despite the lack of last place rankings for Never Say Die, this album came close to coming in last. Without JeffMetal's shock #1 placement, this album only scores 13 points more than Forbidden. The album did have a few more defenders, but nothing close to the top spot. With that in mind, this may have been the highest ranked 2nd to last place album we've had, considering nobody ranked it dead last. It was a weird enough score that I had to triple check to make sure I programmed the spreadsheet correctly, but in the end it seems like a product of these lists really being all over the place. There are a few pet favorites on the forum, but after a certain point the point spread is pretty high and I guess while Never Say Die is one of the few albums to have a #1 rating, the other albums performed better on average. I will say though that the jump from this album to the next is not as large as Forbidden to Never Say Die was.

I feel this album is slightly underrated on this list, but it is not a hill I'm going to die on as I also consider it a low point in the discography, just not the 2nd lowest point. @Jeffmetal?
 
Wow, this ranking's gonna be wild. I admit NSD is kind of a huge drop after the immaculate awesomeness of the first six-and-a-half albums, but I certainly didn't expect it to end up this low. It's Sabbath's "classic rock" album of sorts, very basic, but quite enjoyable (and decidedly less stupid than, say, Bad Company or whatever else you got there). Very often it sounds like (post-Randy) solo Ozzy, sometime around Bark at the Moon era, which is not the best thing ever, sure, and I get that we all expect more from Sabbath, but revisiting the album recently, I consider it okay and somewhat overhated, certainly enjoyable for most of its length. Sure enough, I rate it above all Ozzy- and Dio-less albums with the single exception of Born Again.

The title track sounds like co-written with Carole King, it's just this happy 70s hard rock, but I genuinely like it. Johnny Blade sounds like as if you crossed Who Are You and Dirty Women, which is so bizarre a pairing I can't bring myself to hate the song, although I don't like it very much. Still, the awkward 70s synths are much more palatable than anything the 80s will provide in that regard, it has certain old-school charm where most of the 80s synths and production just sounds vile. Junior's Eyes, beyond having a cool wah-wah riffs and being once again an example of honesty and personal lyrics in Sabbath (which would all but disappear with the departure of Ozzy) - I find him lamenting his late father weirdly moving and worth of hearing on its own - is this typical pseudo-Ozzy-solo track I mentioned in the first paragraph, moderately catchy, mostly solid, maybe just a tad overlong.

In fact my biggest issue seems to be that too many songs cross the five-minute (or even six-minute) mark and don't justify the length in any way, probably caused by the hasty re-writing and re-recording when Ozzy returned. For a band that used to do proto-prog metal, these simplistic tunes stretched out remind me of St. Anger in a way.

Also, with the sudden turn towards this kinda "boogie rock" and sudden onset of weird socially conscious lyrics (the first two tracks, Swinging the Chain), it sometimes sounds like they were attempting at trying to be ... Thin Lizzy? But it's not really working for me, they never had a true streetwise attitude or anyone who'd give off that vibe (I understand none of them was really posh and especially Butler was originally quite poor, but Phil Lynott they were not) and it's just ... bizarre.

A Hard Road sounds like a demo (wtf was happening there? I know the recording of the album was chaotic, but...) Shock Wave is cool, just like Mosh said, very lively, kinda more similar to old Sabbath in its structure/sound, although still more in the vein of Technical Ecstasy than anything previous.

Air Dance's opening reminds me of a different song by a different band, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Slade? Sweet? Well, maybe the sound, but the melody is yet different. Very wistful, nostalgic-sounding, it's a obscure gem that shows up from time to time - I have seen it on several lists of Sabbath deep cuts (like here) and there's been this rumour going around that it was allegedly Ozzy's favourite Sabbath track (it's almost certainly a hoax, if anything, it might have been Bill's favourite track). The instrumental part is really great (once again Latin-influenced), the solo is the best on the album.
A highlight and possibly the best song off the album.

The last three songs are mostly forgettable, although the lounge-doom combo of Breakout is certainly unique and Swinging the Chain again has the glammy Sweet/Slade ovetones at places, but neither is a highlight, really.


Mosh said:
Never Say Die(!) is the lowest rated Ozzy album, but it sits in an interesting place as being one of only three Ozzy era albums that were ranked #1 on at least one list. Can you name the other two
Click to expand...

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Paranoid?

Mosh said:
Only one Ozzy era Sabbath album finished last place on any list. Can you name it?
Click to expand...

If it isn't Never Say Die, then I guess
13?

Mosh said:
Only one album was ranked first place on one given list and last place on another, can you name that album (hint: it's not an Ozzy album)?
Click to expand...

Headless Cross, lol?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top