Paranoid

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If any album signaled the definitive end of the ’60, it was <i>Paranoid</i>. Gone were the flower children, peace chant, and Day-Glo paint; in came monumental, vicious guitar riff, 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 fan, Sabbath’s members had their psychedelic period. But by the late ’60, the death toll in Vietnam was rising, the band’s native Birmingham remained studded with World War II bomb site, and these blue-collar boys saw only mind-dulling factory work ahead of them. Out of that despair came this furiou, 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 politician. “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 soldier, while “Paranoid” traffics in depression. .

via Apple Music

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