Metal Mayhem: Metal Mayhem's Top 100 Bands of All-Time, 2: Black Sabbath

2. Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath is arguably one of the greatest bands in history. They have been accredited with inventing the genre of heavy metal. While an argument can certainly be made to put Sabbath as the number one band, i believe that honor belongs to another band (I'll explain on the next post).

Black Sabbath formed in 1969 at Birmingham, England by vocalist John "Ozzy" Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi, drummer Bill Ward, and bassist Geezer Butler. The band has gone through many lineup changes with Iommi being the only constant.

The band released their first album Black Sabbath on Friday the 13th, 1970 which was wildly successful despite critics trashing the future classic featuring "Black Sabbath" and "NIB." In 1971, they released a quick follow-up in Paranoid which would prove to be even more successful. It featured classic tracks like "Iron Man," "Paranoid," "Fairies Wear Boots," and "War Pigs." The band would continue with great success with the release of Master of Reality and Volume 4.

In 1973, Black Sabbath released their first critically-acclaimed album Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath. This album was a bit of a departure due to the band's experimentation with keyboards, strings, and more complex arrangements. For the next album, Sabbath released one of their strongest albums with 1975's Sabotage. For this album, the band abandoned any semblance of experimentation and made a rock and roll album.

Their next two albums were the uninspired and basically awful releases Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die! These albums seems to have lacked direction, and could be attributed to drug problems within the band and hostility between Ozzy and the rest of the group.

Ozzy Osbourne was officially fired in 1979 by Tony Iommi. The band would replaced him by former Rainbow vocalist Ronnie James Dio, who completely reinvigorated the band. Their 1980 release, Heaven and Hell, was easily one of Sabbath's best albums featuring classic tracks "Neon Knights," "Children of the Sea," and "Heaven and Hell." It was also during the Heaven and Hell tour that Bill Ward left the band being replaced by Vinnie Appice. In 1982, Black Sabbath released The Mob Rules, which was another incredible album; however, RJD and Appice soon left the band due to conflict with Butler and Iommi.

From 1983-1991, Black Sabbath was a shell of their former selves with some terrible albums like Born Again, Seventh Star, The Eternal Idol, Headless Cross, and Tyr. They went through a who-cares list of vocalists like Tony Martin, Ian Gillan, David Donato, Glenn Hughes, and Ray Gillen. The band was so awful and their albums performed so terribly that they were booted from their record label. Imagine that! Black Sabbath dropped from a label!

In 1992, Sabbath reunited with Ronnie James Dio to release the wonderful comeback album Dehumanizer. This is one of my personal favorites. However, the reunion was short-lived as Sabbath and Dio decided to go their separate ways. Sabbath rehired Tony Martin and released two more awful albums, Cross Purposes and Forbidden.

Black Sabbath reunited with Ozzy Osbourne in 1997 for a long and successful reunion tour, and released a live album and a few compilation albums.

In 2007, the Dio fronted Sabbath reunited under the name of Heaven and Hell because they did not want to confuse their fans, but, more likely, they didn't want to burn any bridges with Ozzy. They released a wonderful album titled The Devil You Know which turned out to be RJD's final album.

In 2011, It was announced that the original Black Sabbath sans Bill Ward were working on a new album due for 2013 release. I am looking forward to that!

Here is "Paranoid."