Recording of March 2021: Paranoid Super Deluxe

Black Sabbath: Paranoid Super Deluxe

Rhino/Warner Records R1 556692 (5 LPs). 1970/2020. Rodger Bain, original prod.; Hugh Gilmour, reissue prod.; Barry Grint, LP mastering eng.

Performance *****

Sonics ***

The reviewer venturing to identify the birth bed of heavy metal music risks wrath. So be it.

The heavy metal genre has many roots. The idea of power chords and music centered on ominous, mythological, and vaguely threatening lyrics goes back centuries; consider the use of European church music in various eras to literally scare the hell out of believers. But heavy metal as we know it started 50 years ago with Black Sabbath’s Paranoid.

A mere three years after the Summer of Love, in less than 42 minutes, Black Sabbath’s second album presented a new kind of rock music, a divergence, a world full of possibilities for those who never bought into peace, love, or anything else hippie except long hair and a sense of rebellion. By 1970, the world had darkened, and Black Sabbath’s vision—tales of paranoia, giant metal men dispensing vengeance on mankind, and drug-addled delusions of booted fairies—was suddenly relevant.

A half-century later, what could be more heavy metal than a global plague?

So, to mark the album’s 50th anniversary, Rhino Records collected a batch of recent digital remasters, cut them to five 200gm vinyl platters, and packaged them with a hardcover book full of liner notes, full-size photos, and other early-Sabbath memorabilia, including a reproduction 1970 tour book and a poster of the band posing grimly in front of a church—the sort of thing that would hang on the bedroom wall of a teenaged me. Maybe it did.

Included in the set is Andy Pearce and Matt Wortham’s 2012 remaster of the original album, a 2016 remix to 2-channel stereo of the 4-channel quadraphonic master, and three LPs of 1970 live shows mastered in 2016 by Pearce and Wortham: three sides from Montreux, Switzerland, in stereo and three sides from Brussels, Belgium, in mono. Except for the original album, all these recordings are new to vinyl. The slabs were cut by Barry Grint at Alchemy Mastering at Air Studios in the UK.

During the band’s formative days in the grim industrial city of Birmingham, England, guitarist Tony Iommi damaged his fingertips in a metal press—so no more Page/Hendrix pyrotechnics on the frets. Instead, he tuned down the guitar for a uniquely dark tone and mastered building power chords into catchy tunes. Bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward provided a solid foundation, simple and rhythmic but with a hint of free jazz. Singer Ozzy Osbourne located the narrow range in which his voice best worked its fury.

The ideas and themes presented on the band’s self-titled debut merely hinted at a different kind of rock music—a foreshadowing. Then they gathered for the fast-and-furious six days at Regent Sound Studio in London that produced Paranoid.

Leading off with “War Pigs”—its darker original lyrics, nixed in America by Warner Bros., are heard in the two live performances of the tune—Sabbath laid down the marker: This album will rock harder and louder than almost any music heard before. Look out, Led Zeppelin.

Next comes the title track, composed and recorded in a single evening because producer Rodger Bain needed another song to fill out the album. The rest of the band slunk off to a pub, leaving Tony Iommi to the task. He produced a legendary riff and the band finished the song when they returned. The result: a major hit on both sides of the Atlantic.

Then came a less intense interlude, “Planet Caravan,” the result of studio jamming and psychedelic sound tricks by engineer Tom Allom. Finally comes the pièce de résistance, “Iron Man,” which is pure, full-frontal heavy metal.

After all that, Side 2 is anticlimactic, but it’s well played and never dull. The liner notes tell the story of closing track “Fairies Wear Boots”; it’s recommended reading. Suffice to say, Black Sabbath were street-tough blokes you wouldn’t want to cross.

The “Quad to Stereo” version, remixed by Ray Staff at Air Studios in 2016, provides a different aural take, the familiar suddenly not. It’s pleasantly disorienting. It requires your attention.

Both live shows spill over with power and intensity. The August 31, 1970, show in Switzerland offers better sound, but the band is more focused and polished a month and three days later as recorded for TV in Brussels.

Black Sabbath circa 1970 is not an audiophile affair. If you’re looking to demonstrate “soundstage depth” or “holographic images,” pull out that Beautiful Female Vocals album and have at it. No, this music is proletarian and animalistic. Heavy metal is not subtle or pretty. It’s made to grab you, perhaps somewhere other than by your neck, and get your juices flowing. It’s based on power chords, a strong bass foundation, enunciated drums, and singing that conjures the thunder, horror, and mysticism in the lyrics. At least that’s the intent. With this album, Black Sabbath succeeded.

The 5 LPs are well pressed, loud and proud with quiet surfaces.—Tom Fine

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