On February 13th, 1970, Black Sabbath released their self-titled debut album, inventing heavy metal in the process. But in September of that same year, they unleashed the genre’s bible. While Black Sabbath saw the quartet still working to fully define their musical path, Paranoid was the sound of a band that had tapped into the source from which all metal has flowed for the last fifty-plus years.
Black Sabbath wasn’t the first metal band I heard; that honor falls to Metallica. But I was lucky enough to hear them during my formative years, and while hearing “Black Sabbath” for the first time on a good set of headphones gave me the chills, it was the entirety of Paranoid that made me understand why Sabbath was the one true heavy metal godhead.
That’s because Paranoid is a murderer’s row of incredible songs, starting with “War Pigs.” Catchy without being conventional, progressive without disappearing up its own ass and heavy as hell, “War Pigs” is one of Sabbath’s greatest achievements, a deep, dark and tension-filled rumination on the evils of warfare. When one considers that the world was only a few years removed from the Vietnam War’s bloodiest period, the song takes on even more meaning. According to Wikipedia, bassist Geezer Butler has been quoted as saying that the song is “totally against the Vietnam War, about how these rich politicians and rich people start all the wars for their benefit and get all the poor people to die for them.” The image of corrupt politicians being put to judgment for their corruption remains a powerful one, especially in the post-Trump era.
Kicking off your album with one of the greatest metal tracks of all time would be a ridiculously bold move for just about any other band, but Sabbath’s songwriting throughout Paranoid is so excellent throughout that it doesn’t that album doesn’t feel front-loaded. “War Pigs” is followed by the urgent title track, a short, sharp shock of a song that almost feels like proto-punk and then into the ultra-trippy “Planet Caravan.” “Paranoid” was written in the studio as a filler track, but if there’s one to be learned here it’s that a throwaway Sabbath track from this era of band blows roughly 99.9% of other heavy band’s best songs out of the goddamn water and as such it ended up becoming one of the band’s signature songs. “Planet Caravan” on the other hand is one of the Sabs’ most underrated tracks, a musical trip to the far reaches of space that sounds great when you’re sober but even better with the assistance of a dimly lit room and some primo weed.
“Iron Man” closes out side A of Paranoid and I’m not sure what more can be said about this track other than it is heavy metal personified. From Tony Iommi’s monstrous, world-beating guitar-work, to Ozzy’s maniacal vocals, to the mind-blowing outro that shows why Geezer Butler and Bill Ward are the best metal rhythm section of all time, “Iron Man” is yet another stunning achievement in the Sabbath canon and contains what is quite simply one of the greatest riffs ever written. “Iron Man” is also the track that most folks associate with Black Sabbath and with good reason.
Of course, as amazing as side A of Paranoid is, side B is certainly no slouch, beginning with the devastating duo of “Electric Funeral” and “Hand of Doom.” Taken together, these songs are the songwriting blueprints for pretty much every stoner doom band ever. “Electric Funeral,” begins with a creepy main riff and haunting vocals, becomes frantic around the two-minute mark and then settles back down into a dying man’s crawl before fading back into the abyss from whence it came. “Hand of Doom” on the other, uh, hand, is an atmospheric doom workout that makes excellent use of dynamics and is one my favorite songs from the Sab four. The way the different sections of the song flow into each other is nothing short of masterful, emphasizing yet again the band’s masterful songwriting and musicianship.
Whereas the the first thirty-five minutes and forty-five seconds of Paranoid are serious as a heart attack, the final six minutes and fifteen seconds showcase Black Sabbath at their most playful. “Fairies Wear Boots” is a tale of coming home late at night (presumably after one hell of a bender) to see “a fairy with boots on dancin’ with a dwarf.” The song sees Iommi and Co. returning to their bluesy roots with a shuffling rhythm and a lead-heavy central riff to finish out the album, perfectly capping off eight tracks of absolute metal mastery.
More than any other Black Sabbath album, Paranoid is the one that blew my young mind and in revisiting the album to write this piece, it’s pretty easy to see why. This is the goddamn urtext, nothing more, nothing less, ’nuff said, true believer!
In 1994 I was a freshman in high school. A good boy who followed the rules, got decent grades and showed up to work on time… on the outside. On the inside I was a fucking maniac, an animal caged inside a pressure-cooker that wanted to kill, fuck or destroy everything in sight. A ball of hormones and confusion, tightly wrapped in a nice little Catholic school attending, grocery bagging for $4.65 an hour package. I couldn’t wear my black jeans and Metallica shirt to Catholic school, I didn’t have the strength or the self-confidence to stand up to the privileged, pampered, future white collar scumbags of America that ran the place and I definitely didn’t have the courage to be anything more than friends with the ladies.
For many metalheads, Danzig’s discography ends with either III: How the Gods Kill or 4p. I on the other hand, celebrate Danzig’s entire catalog. While there’s no doubt that many of his latter-day works signaled a shift away from the bluesy, metallic hard rock that the Evil Elvis made his name on, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad albums, it just means they’re different. So without further ado, let’s dig beyond the first four Danzig albums; deep, down you go…
How in the blue hell did I manage to get even this far into the THKD Top 100 without covering a Danzig album?! Granted, the list is in no particular order, but given my Danzig super-fan status, you’d think I would’ve touched on one of the man’s records within the first few posts. The bands/artists you love the most are always the most difficult to write about and let’s face it, I’ve already devoted a fairly exhaustive amount of digital ink to the goddamn mighty GD (here, here, here, here… need I go on?). What’s left to say about my love for the man and his music at this point?
Hard to believe it’s been fourteen years since Eyehategod’s last full length, Confederacy of Ruined Lives. That album was my first Eyehategod experience; I admittedly came late to the band (keep in mind I was twelve when In the Name of Suffering came out), but it was a true case of love at first listen. Sure, I was well-versed in metal by the time I picked up the album at my local Best Buy, but I had never heard anything quite like their ultra-corrosive Black Flag meets Black Sabbath in a dark alley blues, and I couldn’t wait for my next fix.
My attempts to formulate an opinion of Black Sabbath’s 13 have been something of a roller coaster ride. I deliberately didn’t pay much attention to the hype that preceded its release, but the highly publicized sacking of original drummer Bill Ward was impossible to shield oneself from, and immediately left a bad taste in my mouth. The fact that the first album in thirty-five years from the original lineup of the band that invented heavy metal could be derailed by a petty contractual dispute isn’t exactly what one would call a good omen.
Portland, Oregon doom-mongers Witch Mountain have been roaming the underworld since 1997, but didn’t start picking up steam until they were joined by vocalist Uta Plotkin in 2009 and subsequently released their second album (and first new release in ten years) in 2011, the well-regarded South of Salem. Plotkin’s presence rejuvenated the band, leading to increased live activity, a record deal with Profound Lore and finally culminating in Cauldron of the Wild, an album that sees Witch Mountain coming into their own as top-tier purveyors of traditional American doom. Continue reading “Witch Mountain – Cauldron of the Wild (Profound Lore, 2012)”
Utterly embarrassed as I am to admit it, I’m no stranger to bouts of misogyny. Prior to meeting my phenomenal wife, my romantic dealings with the opposite sex were, to put it mildly, less than stellar (I’m sure this surprises no one). From my first “real” girlfriend breaking my heart over a decade ago, to the woman I let repeatedly grind my soul to dust my senior year of college, to countless instances of rejection and other assorted shittiness that would take ages to properly recount, I had been left with a bad taste in my mouth and a fuckload of bitterness before a raven-haired goddess rescued me from the rut I was in. As a result, I treated the few women that dared to try to get close to me like complete shit (this was totally undeserved and my petty way of getting back at the fairer sex as a whole, I reckon) and was generally distrustful and disrespectful towards any woman who wasn’t a blood relative or counted among my inner circle. Continue reading “Leviathan – True Traitor, True Whore (Profound Lore, 2011)”
Eyehategod has long been one of my absolute favorite bands, yet thanks to living in the asshole of the Midwest for all of my natural life (six months in California doesn’t count), I’ve never had the chance to experience their down-tuned Sabbath-ian scuzz-sludge live. Luckily, the band released their first ever live DVD (simply titled Live) late last year, and I think I can safely say it’s the next best thing witnessing the crawling chaos that is Eyehategod in person. Continue reading “DVD Review: Eyehategod – Live (2011)”
Raw, primal, hypnotic. These terms describe the hellish, killing floor blues of Robert Johnson and Howlin’ Wolf just as aptly as they do the grim, violent black metal stylings of Darkthrone and Mayhem. And yet the two genres are complete polar opposites. Or are they? French black metal quartet Glorior Belli doesn’t think so. Beginning on 2009’s Meet Us at the Southern Sign, the band began experimenting with combining black metal and the blues, to devastating effect. On The Great Southern Darkness, the devastation is complete, resulting a in sound that brings to mind a whiskey ‘n’ weed-fueled musical brawl between Eyehategod, Pepper Keenan-era COC, and the aforementioned Darkthrone and Mayhem. I met Glorior Belli guitarist vocalist J. at the crossroads of black metal and the blues to discuss the making of the new album, the French BM scene and other esoteric subjects.
THKD: First of all, tell us a little about the making of the new album, The Great Southern Darkness. What were you looking to accomplish with this release? How would you describe the album’s conception?
J: Same motivation as usual, we always aim to top our past efforts, this time by going even further into incorporating those Americana/Southern/Blues sounds that we cherish. Our last record “Meet Us At The Southern Sign” left me with a feeling of non-achievement, sort of, it’s still a good album but feels like a transition record while “The Great Southern Darkness” emphasizes all the best of Glorior Belli elements into a monolith of Deep NOLA grooves and blazing darkness. The entire process of creation went smooth, took us about half a year from the very first riff ’til we could hold the Master CD in our hands.
THKD: Unfortunately, my digital copy of The Great Southern Darkness did not include lyrics. What can you tell us about the lyrical themes being explored on the album?
J: Well, it took me longer to write the lyrics than the damn music as I’ve spent a lot of time studying and arranging the texts in a poetic way, like I always did in the past. A French guy rhyming in English and singing about the forces of the nightside, it can’t get any better. It’s really important for me that people understand the lyrics, as my ultimate goal is to give them the opportunity to forge the weapons of their own liberation, yet my words will confuse the weaker minds just like the fire of Lucifer can both illuminate and destroy. This is one of my favorite parts (taken from ‘Negative Incarnate’): “From behind the nervous curtains of my trembling cosmic prison, the dark Gods are firmly waiting filled with hatred for the cosmos; outside the frame of creation lies the darkest of all secrets, the magic of the queen dragon waits for us to crush the gates!”.
THKD: You started incorporating blues elements into your sound on Meet Us At the Southern Sign and have continued to refine your fusion of black metal and blues on The Great Southern Darkness. What for you personally is the connection between the two genres? How are they alike and how do they differ from one another in your eyes?
J: It’s kinda like playing with what may seem like 2 opposite elements but in the end they interact with each other. The very first thought that comes to mind when you think about a desert for instance would be the heat… Yet if you go further more into the reflexion, you’ll realize that it can also be deadly cold at night time. Just like the Blues can be devilishly attractive and hypnotizing too. It’s nothing complicated to mix up the genres if you keep in mind what you’re going for in the end. I wanted this record to be almost inviting but still dark and this duality, that could apply to any other life situation, is what keeps the balance in the right position.
THKD: Is blues music popular in France? How did you discover the blues and what prompted you to attempt combining it with black metal? What classic blues artists have influenced you over the years and more specifically your work on the new album?
J: I wouldn’t say it’s really popular as in “trendy” but lots of musicians of course enjoy it. I personally have a thing for Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson obviously, John Lee Hooker, also some of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s best hits, more or less all the classics. I’m really in love with a record called ‘Negro Prison Blues’, the convicts were singing over a beat that they actually made while breaking rocks at the penitentiary. Primal, deep and going straight to your gut and soul. That’s how I like my Blues.
THKD: Which genre do you feel a closer kinship with, black metal or the blues? Has your work in Glorior Belli influenced you more in one direction than the other or have you found a balance between the two styles?
J: Like I said earlier, I think I found the right balance now. Made peace with my past, I’m not fighting against Black Metal anymore now and I don’t want to be influenced in one direction more than the other but rather maintain that balance.
THKD: Black Sabbath started out as a blues band. Do you think heavy metal has always been some sort of mutant form of the blues at its core? Do you think Robert Johnson and Leadbelly would’ve invented heavy metal if electric instruments had been around back then?
J: Now come on! Basically all the genres are some sort of mutant family tree. People experimenting, mixing, giving birth to a new sub-category and so on. But those things take time and Robert Johnson would still have been Robert Johson even if the devil had given him an electrical 8-string Meshuggah guitar.
THKD: Many black metal bands I’ve interviewed believe that the genre is an inherently Satanic form of music. Do you agree with this and why or why not? Is blues music also Satanic? Certainly the legend of Robert Johnson would seem to support this. Is Glorior Belli a Satanic band?
J: I think we’ve been talking about Johnson a bit too much already. Anyway, Glorior Belli is a satanic band if you base your definition on the fact that we are fighting against the lies of the Demiurge, for our essence is to defy and challenge the bastard gods and to pierce through the walls of our cosmic jails. On a more personal note I have been gathering knowledge over the past 10 years or so and experiencing my own path through practices that you wouldn’t even dare to dream about. I don’t think it’s mandatory to sing about Satan when you’re in a Black Metal band as evil can be found in many forms and most certainly in our very own essence.
THKD: Are you at all influenced by any of the bluesier metal bands that have come before, such as Danzig, Corrosion of Conformity or Eyehategod? Why do you think the incorporation of the blues into metal has been mostly an American trait in recent years?
J: CoC and Eyehategod are amongst my top favorite bands. I don’t think Metal bands in France/Europe understand exactly how to incorporate Blues elements into their sound, it’s more like they’re trying to get as close as possible to the American Stoner Rock scene but fail at defining their own identity, at least for the most parts.
THKD: Glorior Belli recently released a music video for the song “They Call Me Black Devil”. What made you choose this particular song for the video? How would you describe the experience?
J: Well basically, there’s a lot of humor in that video, starting with a fake budget-denied letter that I made myself underlining the cheapness of what’s to come. It’s kind of a fuck off to the music industry that echoes to the Red Fang video clip “Wires” where they waste $5,000.00 on trashing random stuff with a car. I understand it can be confusing but that was the whole point of the video clip anyway. The rest is just really random, as I did it on my own with just a small camera. The most important thing here is the music, and they actually call me Black Devil for a good reason.
THKD: The Great Southern Darkness is your first album for Metal Blade. How did you hook up with the label and how has the partnership been so far? At first glance it seems like kind of a strange pairing.
J: I got to know Andreas from Metal Blade ‘Europe’ by some contacts/friends. But it’s not like we had a special pass or whatever. Sent the new record, they loved it and super agent Ula from Clandestine Music helped us seal the contract. being signed on Metal Blade is definitely the greatest achievement for what started 10 years ago as a small yet ambitious band. I only expect the best out of this collaboration as we are absolutely determined to do what we have to in order to promote our new record the way it should be. I can feel that not a single drop of energy is being wasted and there’s a cool symbiosis in the collaboration. I’ve never been confronted by such professional and yet really supportive people, they know how to take care of business with high levels of passion and perseverance. So that’s one less thing I need to worry about as a musician, and it takes a lot of weight off my shoulders to be honest.
THKD: Will you be doing any touring in support of The Great Southern Darkness? How would you describe the Glorior Belli live experience to someone who hasn’t seen you? Any chance you’ll make it over to the US?
J: Nothing confirmed yet, besides an Australian tour next year with friends from The House of Capricorn that should happen in early 2012. Got a couple of shows in November booked in Belgium/Holland/Germany and an exclusive Canadian date in Montreal on November 25th. Basically you will experience the sense of trekking through dark deserts and evil fields with Lucifer as personal guide.
THKD: The French black metal scene has always been strong and extremely diverse. Why do you think this is? How do your surroundings influence your music, if at all?
J: I’ve never been one to believe that actual geographical frontiers could be determinant in the creative process. I don’t even feel like I belong to any kind of scene, if you close your eyes for a minute and listen to the CD, well except maybe for my ugly accent, I dare you to say this is French BM. What? You did?! Alright then. I guess it must be well-deserved somehow. It’s true we have a bunch great bands around here, but mostly great individuals who don’t care about limitations, just like me. Guys who don’t have to pretend.
THKD: What are you currently listening to? Do you have any recommendations for THKD readers?
J: Lately I’ve been listening to The Dillinger Escape Plan, Botch, Rome, 16HP/Woven Hand, Down, Alice In Chains, Neurosis, Mastodon, Acid Bath, Kyuss…
THKD: Are there any final thoughts you’d like to add?
J: We will defeat and bring down the cosmic scheme! See you all Frogerz somewhere down the road.
THKD 