Heaven and Hell by Black Sabbath
Heaven and Hell is the ninth studio album by British heavy metal band Black Sabbath, released on April 25, 1980. It is their first album featuring lead singer Ronnie James Dio and producer Martin Birch.Heaven and Hell became one of Black Sabbath's best-selling albums, revitalizing the group after original lead singer Ozzy Osbourne's departure. It was re-released in the Black Sabbath box set The Rules of Hell.Heaven and Hell is the first Black Sabbath album recorded without founding member Ozzy Osbourne, who was fired from the band and replaced by Ronnie James Dio. Geoff Nicholls of Quartz also joined—a possible replacement for bassist Geezer Butler, who had missed most of the album's writing sessions and was going through a divorce. When Butler decided to stay, Nicholls became Black Sabbath's keyboardist—a position he would hold for over 20 years (though he usually played off-stage during concerts). Former Elf and Rainbow bassist Craig Gruber also rehearsed with the band. Gruber's involvement appears to be a point of debate: In a 1996 interview, Tony Iommi mentions that Gruber played with the band for "a bit". Gruber has stated that his contribution was much more substantial and that he only left the group once Butler decided to return. Drummer Bill Ward stayed on through the album's completion and toured with the band through August, but drinking and other developments in his personal life eventually prevented him from completing the Black and Blue Tour, which featured Black Sabbath and Blue Öyster Cult. Ward's mid-tour replacement Vinny Appice would become an official member.
If any album signalled the definitive end of the ’60s, it was <i>Paranoid</i>. Gone were the flower children, peace chants and Day-Glo paint; in came monumental, vicious guitar riffs, Ozzy Osbourne’s snarling twist of a voice, and stories of doom, drug addiction and death. It wasn’t always this way, of course: Confirmed Beatles fans, Sabbath’s members had their psychedelic period. But by the late ’60s, the death toll in Vietnam was rising, the band’s native Birmingham remained studded with World War II bomb sites, and these blue-collar boys saw only mind-dulling factory work ahead of them. Out of that despair came this furious, uncompromising record. Despite critics’ misreading of the album as a Satanic screed (a perception Sabbath played up), the album in fact contained searing indictments of the elite. “War Pigs”—meant at one point to be the album’s title track—opens with air-raid sirens and ultimately envisions the evisceration of warmongering politicians. “Iron Man”, bearing one of the most recognizable guitar riffs on the planet, is told from the perspective of a man who, after being blasted into space, has seen humanity’s grim future but is unable to communicate it upon his return. “Hand of Doom” deals with heroin addiction among soldiers, while “Paranoid” traffics in depression. This is heavy subject matter, and the band developed a musical vocabulary to match it, with ponderous drums and scowling guitars that felt light-years away from, say, CSN&Y. Many critics found the songs overly theatrical, but the public was ravenous for them. Within just over two years, Black Sabbath released four albums and birthed something much bigger than themselves: heavy metal. <i>Paranoid</i> remains the diabolical wellspring from which innumerable bands—and many metal subgenres—have sprung.
