Black Sabbath: Sabbath Bloody Sabbath - 1973

The last of a great run of five albums from Black Sabbath, from 1970-1973, saw the band breaking out into experimenting even more. 

We got boogie piano on Sabbra Cadabra (played by Rick Wakeman - bored of recording Yes's bloated, indulgent Tales From Topographic Oceans in the same studio at the same time. Sabbath paid him in beer for his contribution, incidentally), some ethereal folky instrumental in Fluff, the string orchestration of Spiral Architect and, several years earlier than many groups used them, synthesiser on Who Are You?. The latter is really electro-pop sounding, which is odd to hear. The bit in the middle is like a cross between ABBA and the early eighties post punk bands. Looking For Today has a poppy, rockiness to it as well, merging electric and acoustic guitars with a flute, surprisingly. 

The title track, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, is no experimental number, however, as it is trademark Sabbath heaviness. That said, even this had a gentle acoustic bridge. The same can be said of the slow industrial crunch of A National Acrobat, without the acoustic bit this time, just full on chunky riffage. Get an earful of the guitar bit near the end too. Great stuff. 

Killing Yourself To Live is solid and muscular as well, so the basic blueprint was still alive and well in places. This led to a different sounding album for half of it, but much of the old riffery is still there, of course, however Osbourne's voice has begun to adopt those by now clichéd heavy metal high pitched tones and overall, for me, it loses some of the raw, gritty edginess that made the debut album, or indeed the subsequent ones, such a joy. You can't beat the down ' n' dirty pure earthiness of all of those. 

This, for me, though, is the last of the impressive run of five great Black Sabbath albums that were released in just three short years.