Black Sabbath – Vol 4

RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK

Black Sabbath – Vol 4

This week‘s Recommendation Of The Week is an album that has existed in my soul from the first time I heard the opening notes of the opening track. Vol 4 by Black Sabbath was released in early September 1972, and is their fourth album. Along with Master Of Reality, Vol 4 is a pinnacle of Black Sabbath’s illustrious career, and is one of the most influential albums in the history of music.

From the opening notes of “Wheels Of Confusion”, you can actually feel the dramatic tension and intense magnitude and power of this album! Master Of Reality introduced us to Doom and Sludge Metal, with its dark tones, dissonant melodies, and an absolutely intense pounding and thumping of bass and drums that was unlike anything out there at the time of release. In Vol 4, we feel like we have broken through the restraints of the darkness, and we are free from the dungeon, only to find a sunrise of incredible tension and an epic journey of defeat and despair ahead of us. In many ways, Vol 4 is more bleak, and far more hopeless than Master Of Reality, as the nightmare envisioned in Master Of Reality, turned into grim reality in Vol 4.

At this point in their career, Black Sabbath were becoming recognized as the Metal Gods that we know them to be in history. Their shows were unbelievable displays of power and volume never witnessed before. Parents were scared and kids couldn’t get enough! Ozzy’s vocals searing over the intense power melodies of Tony Iommi, layered with the Jazz influenced mastery of Geezer Butler and Bill Ward were already stuff of legend. However, constant touring, drinking, and drug use turning into addiction was wearing on the sanity of each member of the band. When you hear Ozzy’s vocals, you can almost hear him seething and crying in emotional and physical pain, desperately reaching for help. Within that realm, Ozzy belted out vocals that felt they were coming from the depths of hell and echoing through to the heavens.

What Black Sabbath captured on Vol 4 is an intense energy that still hasn’t been matched.

Tony Iommi‘s searing guitar solos and melodic riffs hook right in your soul. They encompass this entire album and you can hear the roots of 50 years of Heavy Metal being planted with the seeds of each beautiful note. His guitars solos are still ringing within me, balancing my equilibrium in perfect harmony and flowing through my sensory receptors since my first listen over 30 years ago.

The production on this album sounds hazy, giving it an almost static veneer. This is by design, as this album uses that haze to lull you, almost hypnotizing you into an intense trance of melody that evokes extreme emotion. Through that haze, however, the colors of Black Sabbath bleed through and hit you with overwhelming power, leaving you with an unexplainable unease that you long and yearn for. It builds within you as you listen until you feel like exploding. It’s a truly incredible listening experience.  The magnitude and power here hits like no other on any of their albums, on any album. That is what makes Vol 4 an absolute masterpiece.

This album has some very key moments of musical euphoria:

In the song “Tomorrow’s Dream”, you can hear multiple layers of guitar melodies grabbing at you, creating a tension that is palpable, especially as it creates chaotic swells underneath Ozzy’s fierce vocals. On “Changes”, we are witness to Ozzy’s introspection and the defeat he feels within his own life. He feels helpless and the bleakness takes hold as you realize the changes he’s enduring are self-inflicted effects of his own doing, and he has all but resigned himself to sink into them.

Now, we get to “Snowblind”. Snowblind is a song that sees Ozzy in a last gasp attempt to save himself before he plummets deep into the abyss of addiction. The cry reaches its most intense and fades slowly as he loses his grip and falls into the downward spiral. This is where Tony’s guitar solo, creating the spiral, swallows you up and envelops you into a severely overpowering, dramatic, emotional journey downward. It is so adrenalizing, explosive, and overwhelming. The guitar solo of “Snowblind” has been one of the most influential pieces of music for me. It always has, and I feel so deeply each and every note in every nerve ending in my body. I can’t help it, but from the moment that Ozzy starts with the lyrics:

“My eyes are blind but I can see
  The snowflakes glisten on the trees
  The sun no longer sets me free
  I feel the snowflakes freezing me”

I immediately feel the hairs on my neck and my arms vibrate and rise. I feel a sensation in my throat and I feel an overwhelming sense of confusing emotion, a mixture of intense sorrow, but also an overwhelming euphoria. It is almost like a drug, and I can’t explain it, but I cry every time I hear it. As the song drifts into the spiral of the guitar solo, I feel it in every part of me. I’m not so certain as to why, except I know that it hits something deep inside of me, deep in my heart, my soul and my gut and tears well in my eyes. This has happened on every listen of this beautiful masterpiece since my first listen when I was 15 years old.

“Snowblind” is one of my favorite songs ever and I could never live without it. It truly has an unexplainable, incredibly profound effect on me.

Vol 4 is one of the greatest albums ever released and something that should exist within everyone’s collections and musical journey.

With the passing of Ozzy a year ago, the album hits even harder. For me, in many ways, I will never fully get over the magnitude of the loss of Ozzy. He represented too much of what makes me who I am. Black Sabbath’s music is largely responsible for who I became and the world I created, and I will always be forever grateful

Essential Track: “Snowblind”