Paranoid: Official Scrabbled Album Discussion
With the marketing blitz for Iron Man 2 I am sure everyone’s been hearing a lot Black Sabbath lately but “Paranoid” is another one of those albums I’ve never completely heard before, sure I know “Iron Man” and “Paranoid” but so does anyone with a radio. “War Pigs” was introduce to me via Faith No More. The album, while apparently panned by critics upon it’s initial release, is now regarded as one of the top albums of all time. RollingStone had it at 130 on their top 500 greatest album list and Guitar World rated it the 6th best guitar album of all time in their top 100 list. So, like we did with The Who let’s spend some time with the album that launched Ozzy into super-stardom.
Rate the album 1-5 and if you want to be thorough rate each song on the same scale.
Find a copy on the FTP.
Comments
This is one of those albums that has grown up with me. Sometime in 6th or 7th grade when I first started listening to my dad’s Led Zeppelin records and whatnot, I went over to the local Strawberries music store to get whatever the fuck it was I thought was cool back then. I don’t even remember. But whatever it was that I got it didn’t matter cause Dad saw Paranoid on one of those “GREAT BUYS! $7.99!” racks and bought it for me.
Almost two decades later and it’s become my favorite proto-metal/hard rock album from that whole era, and maybe of the whole wider “loud distorted guitar music” genre. Seemingly every year, I come back to this album with some sort of new interest and something else catches me. When I’m in iTunes and I’ve got no idea what to listen to, it’s a default. Reviewing this will be fun to try to listen to it with new ears, but I’ll be surprised if anything gets below four stars.
- War Pigs/Luke’s Wall (5): Quite possibly my favorite metal/hard rock song of all time. I get goosebumps every time they hit the line “Satan laughing spreads his wiiiings… OH LORD YEAH!” I’m not even entirely sure why. It just does it for me. The melodic solo, to me, is the perfect model of what a guitar solo should be. Light on the meedlies and squeedlies, heavy on melody, and totally guitar-face conducive.
- Paranoid (5): Christ this song kicks ass. I defy you to play this car at full volume in your car and not break the speed limit. I want to blast it out of a hot rod with flames shooting out the side and run over all manner of small, defenseless animals.
- Planet Caravan (5): Back in the day when I had black walls full of star stickers and black light posters, this song is what I though drugs felt like. Turns out, I wasn’t too far off.
- Iron Man (4): My favorite song on this album when I was a kid, but I end up skipping it a lot. It just suffers from overexposure. Though usually I can just skip the first few verses and be down. It’s all gravy from there.
- Electric Funeral (4): Such an evil little riff.
- Hand of Doom (4): I always forget about the other part of this song. The kickass part. I kind of which it was more kickass part and less plodding, dirgey part. But it’s still pretty great all around.
- Rat Salad (4): Foreplay. This track exists solely to get you pumped up for the vulgar, filthy, raunchy sex that’s to come.
- Jack the Stripper/Faeries Wear Boots (5): Vulgar, filthy, raunchy sex.
Overall: 5.
It’s a perfect album. The individual tracks are far greater than the sum of their parts and it’s damn hard not to just hit play again when it’s over. And if you don’t like it, chances are you just don’t have the volume turned up enough.
Overrated album. I say this as someone who celebrates the entire recorded output of the band Black Sabbath, from it’s self titled first release up until the Born Again album with Ian Gillian from Deep Purple on vocals.
If it were the only album Sabbath ever released it would be a great album. But they released many other superior albums. Unfortunately unlike their classic rock peers, they never really had other big, popular albums and almost all of their classic rock “hits” come from this album. So as a result it gets perceived as being their best when really it’s just their most popular. For my money focusing on only the Ozzy years, Volume 4 is tops, followed by Master of Reality, then Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (I’m not even getting into the two Dio albums which are probably top 5 material for me and would be slotted in to the 3 I mentioned).
As for some of the songs themselves:
- War Pigs: Liked it a lot more as a kid when it seemed scary and controversial. Now I give it a 3.
- Paranoid: Undeniably a great song. Can’t say anything bad about it. I give it a 5.
- Iron Man: Back in the day I would have given it a 4 or a 5 but I’m sorry overexposure has not been kind to this one. It’s a 3
I’d pretty much give the rest of the songs on the album a 2. So overall I’m going to peg the record at a solid 3. I’m deducting maybe a half a point for overexposure but even factoring that in I can’t give it a 4 or a 5 by any stretch of the imagination. In fact as it sits I can’t even really listen to this album any more, whereas the other ones I mentioned I can play over and over again.
Also, is it common knowledge that Tony Iommi is missing the tips of 2 of his fingers? He uses plastic prosthetic tips. Ironically enough, similar to Jerry Garcia (I believe).
I believe I’d heard that before, yes.
Also, I never owned another Black Sabbath album until maybe two years ago. So this album, for me, is the alpha and omega. I’m coming around on the other stuff, though. I still haven’t even heard a Dio album of theirs yet.
Sabbath is my Beatles. They are seriously the band from which everything related to rock music stems from for me. Not in that all bands sound like them, just in that each band I ever hear is measured up in some way to them and what they sound like and their influence and everything about them.
Kevin said:just in that each band I ever hear is measured up in some way to them and what they sound like and their influence and everything about them.
You may be going about things the wrong way.
I’m listening to it again to get a fresh perspective. I haven’t put the album on for at least a few months / year.
My initial instinct is to give it a 5, because of how important an album it actually is/was. However, I’m going to pretend that music history doesn’t exist, and assess it in a vacuum.
It’s also intriguing to me how relatively recent this canonization of Sabbath actually is. I mean through the late 70’s and through most of the 80’s and early 90’s Sabbath specifically but metal in general was really considered cheesy. I mean they were just not considered even remotely up there in the pantheon of classic rock bands. But once Sabbath-esque stoner rock/doom became it’s own genre in the mid 90’s and especially so once hipper indie rock bands started mining that territory, it’s interesting to see how much they did a 180 as far as their reputation/history went just within the past 15 or so years. I’d be hard pressed to think of another “classic” band who has been so rehabilitated critically speaking. I’m curious if anyone else can come up with any.
I dont’ even mean bands who didn’t get their due and became popular later in life. I mean popular bands who sold records but were critically reviled, having their work re-evaluated from a critical concensus.
Kev, it could just be that all the guys like me whose aging classic-rock Dads showed them Sabbath when they were younger got old enough to start writing blogs and working for music magazines and influencing people’s opinions. I’ve honestly never known Sabbath to be cheesy. In my view, they’ve always been up there with Zeppelin and Deep Purple and all those dudes.
I keep waiting for my generation to come around on how fucking awesome The Doors are.
I don’t know. I’m talking critically speaking. Even amongst your dad’s age group (I’ll call the classic rock generation) they were always considered kind of a joke. People liked them obviously but it was mostly the burn out, proto-metalhead crowd. They had nowhere the reach or fan base of a Zeppelin or stones or even the Doors who had some semblance of female appeal and also a good amount of critical acclaim.
There’s a reason why for well over a decade Ozzy refused to have the band be considered for induction into the rock and roll hall of fame. He was pretty much calling the critics out and saying “You always thought we sucked, you always mocked us, and now you want to consider us for a hall of fame? No thanks.” He relented obviously but their lack of serious critical acclaim was the reason behind that.
Okay, I finally got through it again. Here’s my sub par analysis.
- War pigs – (4) (was a 5 until they sped up the end)
- Paranoid – (5) RUNNING AND FIGHTING
- Planet Caravan -(2) Kinda boring. The tappy drums sound like hippy stuffs.
- Iron Man – (2) It’s really not that good of a song. At all. Way too simplistic. Reminds me of a high school rock band with both it’s lack of instrumental creativity and terrible lyrics. I hate when vocals completely mimic the sound of the lead guitar. It’s just lazy songwriting.
- Electric Funeral – 2.5 suffers from the same vocal/guitar mimicking of iron man, but I the riff is a bit darker, which I find more interesting. I love the lyric “Robot minds of robot slaves.” Otherwise, Ozzie rhymes too much and does so in poor fashion.
- Hand of Doom – 4 Here’s a well-written track that culminates nicely. It layers/builds upon itself and gets moving. Has sort of a sound of victory or triumph.
- Rat Salad – 3 It’s alright. I picture a fat lady in a flower pattern moo moo dancing to it.
- Jack The Stripper / Fairies Wear Boots – 4 Starts off like the previous track, but then gets a little attitude.
Overall: 3-ish.
My father exposed me to this album at an early age. I think it’s probably what turned me onto metal. That, and a box of cassette tapes I got from my cousin from when he was sent to prison. That’s how I found slayer, megadeth, metallica, maiden, and a few other bands. Metal Blade compilation tapes.
I forgot commas and wrote, “MOO MOO DANCING.”
Amusing!
Just listened to it for the second time, overall I like the album despite a couple weak spots.
- War Pigs – 4 Definitely one of my favorite songs on the album, the sped up ending sorta sucks but the rest is awesome.
- Paranoid – 3.5 This is pretty much what I assumed all Sabbath songs sounded like.
- Planet Caravan – 3 Definitely not what I expected to find on this album! Especially after just hearing Paranoid, the song itself is ok.
- Iron Man – 3.5 Classic song/riff that’s lost it’s impact due to over exposure.
- Electric Funeral – 3 Great groove on this one
- Hand of Doom – 5 The best song on the album! I think John and I have opposite feelings as to what part of the song is the best.
- Rat Salad – 2 Meh, Not great but not terrible…the copy I have on my computer is named Rat Salat…that’s all I got
- Fairies Wear Boots – 4 and the album closes with another strong one.
Overall the album is 4 and I can definitely see why people come back to it over and over again. This definitely won’t be deleted from my iTunes Library…Who’s Next on the other hand…