BLACK SABBATH Week On Maidenfans! (8/18 - 8/25)

Favorite Sabbath albums? (Pick up to 5)


  • Total voters
    15

Mosh

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Staff member
What better way to kick off bands weeks 3.0 than with the fathers of Metal: Black Sabbath.

Here we devote a week of discussion to Black Sabbath. Anything goes; you can discuss your favorite/least favorite albums, eras, or even share cool live videos. Enjoy!

Talking points:
  • Which is the best Sabbath era?
  • Least favorite album?
  • Should Sabbath make more albums with Ozzy?
 
Why do you ignore The Devil You Know? It's a Black Sabbath album in all but the name, and the only thing that stopped them from using the name is Sharon Osbourne. Even SMX put the album in his Survivors.
 
As a force of habit from my survivors, I accidentally set the poll to close early. :mad: Is it possible for a mod to fix that? If not, you can post your favorite albums if you miss the poll!

On the subject of Devil You Know: Iommi was the one who wanted to use a different name. The Ozzy fronted version of the Sabbath also still toured occasionally and they didn't want to close the door on future shows. They didn't even decide to do an album together until they noticed the positive reaction to live shows. The band made the distinction themselves, so that's what I'll follow. However, if you want to discuss it here nobody is stopping you from doing so.
It will be included in the Dio survivor though and the poll for Dio week.
 
Definitely Paranoid for my favourite Sabbath album, there's not a single bad track on it. It goes to show how good an album it when the band plays at least half of it at every concert. I've had a rekindled love for the title track since hearing it live back in December, it was a brilliant way to end the show, got everyone on their feet, clapping, singing. Amazing how the song was only written in about 10 minutes.

As for least favourite, that'd be Never Say Die. It's just a bit meh for me.

Sabbath should certainly make another album with Ozzy, 13 was a fantastic album. Again I can't think of a track that's in anyway bad.

And apologies for the plug, but here's a collection of videos I recorded when I saw them in concert.


:)
 
I love Black Sabbath but Ozzy never shuts up on stage, it annoys the hell out of me every time I watch or listen to them live.

I don't know about a favorite album, but one of my favorite underrated ones is Dehumanizer. I think it kicks ass, but perhaps it could have been even better considering the fact that we had the return of Dio, Vinnie Appice AND Geezer Butler on that album....But still a great one that people don't seem to care that much about.
 
Ozzy has always annoyed me but it doesn't obscure the fact the band made some great stuff while he was part of it.
The first two Dio albums are among my favourite of all time.
He retained the power and the ominous feel of the band and added an unmatched element of grandness.
 
He retained the power and the ominous feel of the band and added an unmatched element of grandness.

But no matter how much better of a singer Dio was, technically, he never matched what Ozzy was capable of doing on a track like "Black Sabbath"....


Least favorite album? I remember Forbidden as being particularly bad, but I need to have a re-listen.
 
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I think Tony Martin's run in Sabbath was particularly underrated.

Headless Cross and Seventh Star are pretty great albums, shame they're often overlooked, as the title tracks from both albums are two of my favourite non Ozzy era Sabbath songs.

I'd quite like Tony, Geezer and Vinnie Appice to team up again with Tony and work on some material again.

:)
 
Favourite Sabbath album is definitely Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Eternal Idol, Headless Cross (+ Others) are great too. Mob Rules is hugely overrated. I'll expand on this tomorrow because I want sleep now.

Least favourite album would probably have to be Born Again, it's got 1 half decent song on it and the rest is just trash.
 
Mob Rules is hugely overrated.
Mob Rules is awesome.

My favorite is, well, you can probably guess from my avatar. Of the Ozzy albums, I like MoR and v.4 more than most. Children of the Grave might by my favorite Sabbath song of all time. Screwed up and should have voted for Sabotage instead of SBS, but love them both -- first two songs on SBS are outstanding.
 
Mob Rules is awesome.

Truth for the following two alone.
Sign of the Southern Cross is a monstrous beast lumbering across the firmament and Falling off the Edge of the World is an impending anxiety attack put to music.
 
Yes, Mob Rules does have some outstanding tracks on it. Infact Falling Off the Edge of the World is my favourite Dio-era song, Sign of the Southern Cross is also excellent, while Mob Rules is a great short track. So the highlights of the album are just that. The problem I have with it is the rest of the album. Turn Up the Night is a somewhat good (if inferior) clone of Neon Knights but the other 5 songs are just so average. I can't give any album an excellent score if over half the album is not very good. None of those songs are bad perse, and there's definitely worse in Sabbath's discography. However, I can't rank it high among Sabbath's albums because the majority of the album is very average. It'd be like Sabbath Bloody Sabbath having 5 Who Are You? on it, or Paranoid having 5 Planet Caravan on it.
 
Agree with you that those are the top 3 songs, but to compare the rest to Planet Caravan is just wrong. The riff of Country Girl is classic Iommi. Granted, there's not much more to the song than that, but it's enough. Slipping Away, Voodoo, Turn Up the Night and Over and Over are all solid. Only arguable filler is E5150, which is still kind of interesting and spooky.
 
As a force of habit from my survivors, I accidentally set the poll to close early. :mad: Is it possible for a mod to fix that? If not, you can post your favorite albums if you miss the poll!

Done. :)
 
I love the Dio years and Ronnie as a singer but Ozzy is the boss when it comes to sing his songs. I'd like to hear him sing Heaven and hell... just curious :innocent:
One of my very favourite album is Reunion, a live recording from 1997 shows. It was recorded by the original line-up and sounds very very powerful ; a quality that the first studio albums lack to a certain extent.
 
Thanks!

I like about half of Mob Rules. The title track, Country Girl, Southern Cross, and Falling Off the Edge of the World are all amazing songs that give even the best on H&H a run for their money. However, the rest of that album I could do without.
Even still, I find myself going back to that album more than most Ozzy albums. Those are a lot more hit or miss. I really love Paranoid and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, the debut and Sabotage are pretty good but not great, and the rest I don't really have any use for. Technical Ecstasy, Never Say Die, and 13 are pretty bad.
And then there's the Tony Martin era, which is quite underrated but it seems to get some love here which is cool. Eternal Idol and Headless Cross are stellar albums that are up there with Sabbath's best imo. The other three albums he did with them range from bad to really good, and overall I think I'd consider it one of Sabbath's more consistent eras. I'd actually really love to see Martin do another album with them, there's a power on those records that wasn't present at all in 13.

I think it's cool that Sabbath finally managed to get another Ozzy album out, but it's so bad that I'm not sure if I'd be interested in another one.
 
One of my pet peeves with Sabbath is the imbalance of perception. To classic rock fans, Sabbath ends in 1978. To old school metal fans, Sabbath exists between 1980 and 1982. To the hipsters, only the Martin-era albums deserve attention.

It's true that the albums from the individual eras of the band sometimes sound radically different in tone, style and atmosphere, but I still have no problem accepting for myself that Paranoid, Heaven and Hell and Headless Cross are stepping stones in the same band's career - even if there is sometimes only one person to bind it all together. So all eras deserve the same recognition.

Black Sabbath is probably my second favourite metal band after Maiden, because I don't consider anything they've done a total failure (unlike, say, Judas Priest) and even their worst moments blow away very much out there. Sure, there are some low points in their discography, like Never Say Die or Cross Purposes, but even they have a lot on them that I enjoy. Even though I consider the Dio-era lineup to be among the very best things that ever existed in metal, I can by no means reduce the band's output to that. So I have severe difficulties answering the poll's question. I guess if I really had to boil it down to five, it'd be the debut, Masters of Reality, Heaven and Hell, Seventh Star and Headless Cross. Runners up would be Vol. 4, Mob Rules and Tyr.
 
As much as I love Dio, the Ozzy era will always be my personal favorite. It's hard for me to pick a most favorite Sabbath album. My least favorite is definitely Technical Ecstasy. And as amazing as 13 is, I so badly want to hear another album with Ozzy.
 
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