Still, it wasn’t until this year that I listened to a Black Sabbath album start to finish. What took so long. My goodness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Previous entries:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Naked Raygun<\/a> | Pure Hell<\/a> | Big Joanie <\/a>| The Beatles<\/a> | The Beatles <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n How I Came Across This Album<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Not to brag, but I play guitar. If you play guitar, the Ozzy Osborne trifecta of Tommy Iommi (Sabbath’s guitarist), Randy Rhoades (first Ozzy solo guitarist, wrote “Crazy Train”), and Zakk Wylde (Ozzy’s longest-tenured guitarist<\/a>, known especially for the hypontic Les Paul<\/a>) shreds its way into your brain practically by, uh, ozzmosis<\/a>. An early guitar book my parents bought me was called something like 25 Greatest Guitar Songs Of The 20th Century<\/em>, and “Crazy Train” was in it. Those Zakk Wylde signatures were all over the guitar magazines I read. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, old timers always said Tommy Iommi was the best. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I won’t rehearse too much of the Godfather of Heavy Metal here. I don’t know enough about them, I certainly have not been taking the Sabbath fans in my life seriously enough. I know how much I don’t know<\/em>, but let’s get into it a little. Tommy Iommi lost the tips of his middle and ring fingers on his fretting hand in an accident on his last day of work at a sheet metal factory. As a result, he sludged his guitar down to lower tunings, giving his strings a haunting wobbliness. He relied on power chords to a previously unheard-of degree\u2014does a guy with 10 fingers write “Iron Man?” I mean, yeah, on a long enough timeline. It helps when your only strong fingers are index and pinky1<\/a><\/sup>, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What’s super sick about Iommi is the clear jazz influence, a willingness to jam out songs and write cool unison riffs to play with the bass and a clear passion for feeling the music in the room. Randy Rhoades and his neoclassical approach to metal is sick as hell, but it’s practically standard across metal. Not many bands now are willing to sound like three high guys in a room, plus Ozzy singing about LSD and losing his mind, plus Satan and military generals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m getting ahead of myself. I came across this album because if you’ve ever been within 50 yards of a guitar shop, someone has told you to listen to this album. Plus, you know<\/em> “War Pigs” and “Paranoid” and “Iron Man.” Your marching band probably played at least one of those songs. Today, we’re doing the whole album. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Track By Track<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Enough Sabbath biography. I’m Bill S. Preston, Esquire, and I’m Ted “Theodore” Logan, and we’re Wyld Stallions, here to tell you all about the totally bitchin and bodacious album, Paranoid<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n War Pigs<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"album](\"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/image-4-1024x683.png\")