Black Sabbath (song)

Black Sabbath is a song by Black Sabbath from the 1970 eponymous debut album appeared. Because of the for that time unusually dark -sounding riffs, it contributed significantly to the fact that the album " real" metal albums is now regarded as one of the first ever. The song has been covered by numerous bands, including Type O Negative, Vader and live Grave Digger, Megadeth and others.

The music was written by all band members; the text was written by Ozzy Osbourne.

Structure

The 6:21 minutes long song begins with rain sounds and chimes that are abruptly by a heavy guitar riff in the key of G minor, played with 68 beats per minute, replaced. The reef consists of two cycles, which is repeated across a large part of the song. It is based on a two notes held G5 power chord, the highest note is then kept re- chipped and about the same length. In the second cycle, a single Db is played, which is in every odd cycle of the reef ( with the exception of verses ) by Tony Iommi with a fast trill in the fifth fret of the A string ( note D ) decorated. The changes between G and Db corresponds to the interval of a tritone, the use of which is a hallmark of the band, giving the reef a dissonant sound.

Reduce After four repetitions of the motif all instruments their volume, two more later uses the vocals of Ozzy Osbourne. The following refrain is in turn held purely instrumental and corresponds to 100% of the above intro riff.

After another verse -chorus- block, the pace doubled to 132 bpm and Iommi begins with an eighth note triplets riff, which by ternary played eighth notes by bassist Geezer Butler, in which the first note of a " triplet " is each emphasizes a driving rhythm gets. Osbourne sings the last verse, the riff then changes again. Iommi played in this alternate long -held G5 and B5 chords of a descending bass line ( sequence: GFE Eb) is accompanied by four strokes. Immediately after the first pass uses the guitar solo, which consists entirely of material of the G minor pentatonic scale and typical blues elements has ( whole tone bends, unison bends, isolated quarter-tone bends ). This reflects the fact that the band's debut album was heavily influenced by the blues. Subsequently, the chords are played briefly in a triplet pattern, after which the song ends.

Text

The text is about the condemnation of the protagonists. This Satan appears as a black shape with eyes of fire, pointing at him. The protagonist escapes from him and realizes that he was chosen by Satan. He sees the flames rise around and God calls for help. The text was inspired by Butler's experience with the occult and should therefore warn against experiments. In the book Lords of Chaos, this is called " almost Christian fear of demons and witchcraft ." The Catholic behaved Butler was a magazine with a satanic world view of things that had been told him as Catholics, faced and turned to in the course of his employment so that, to him, " terrible things " happened. The original third verse can be heard only on bootlegs and the version of Black Sabbath to The Ozzman Cometh.