If I were to pick one album to point to for people to realize just how good of musicians the original quartet were, this would be the album. In my opinion, this was the last great album Black Sabbath released with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals. There are some songs that I do not particularly care for, but overall, this is a great album.Several of the songs on this release should have been classic Sabbath tracks. "A National Acrobat" is actually my favorite song off of this album and is one of my all-time favorite Sabbath songs in general. In addition, "Sabbra Cadabra" and "Killing Yourself to Live" are also amazing songs. The title track is the most well-known song off of this album and appears on several greatest hits compilations, as well it should. But, there are other great tracks on here.
Sabbath was experimenting with some different types of music on this. "Fluff" is a very soft track and "Who are You?" features a lot of electronic keyboard effects. There is also some other woodwind instrumentation at various points adding to the experience.
As I mentioned, I don't particularly care for a couple of the songs, most notably the aforementioned "Fluff" and "Who are You?", but that does not mean they are bad songs. I just do not like them as well. The rest of the album though more than makes up for it. This was one of my favorite Sabbath releases for a long time, and remains so today.
"If I were to pick one album to point to for people to realize just how good of musicians the original quartet were, this would be the album."
ReplyDeleteWhat, not Technical Ecstasy?
Seriously though, I think Vol. 4 is my favorite--Supernaut is AMAZING. On the other hand, I have a hard time picking between 4, Master of Reality, and Paranoid--all 5 star albums. This one would come in soon after; "A National Acrobat" is amazing and underrated. In a way, this one marks the beginning of the end because of that experimentation, with Sabotage not nearly as good, Technical Ecstasy awful, and Never Say Die! too little, too late to save the lineup. I thought it was ironic that Never Say Die! was the one right before they did, in fact, say die.