4, recorded in Los Angeles, arrived the following year, and was the first Sabbath outing to not see Rodger Bain handling production duties - Iommi and then-manager Patrick Meehan would co-produce the album. The LP also featured the Iommi-composed/Butler-penned "After Forever," which, much to the confusion of some of the band's more zealous critics, reflected the bass player's deep Catholic faith. Released in 1971, the brutish Master of Reality was certified double platinum on the strength of fan favorites like "Sweet Leaf," "Children of the Grave," and "Into the Void," the latter two of which saw Iommi downtune three semitones in order to release even more string tension - Butler followed suit, and the deep earth pummeling that followed has been widely cited as the auger of sludge, doom, and stoner metal. Sabbath continued to blow the unholy horn of plenty with albums three and four. Paranoid also afforded Sabbath their first measure of controversy after an inquest was made regarding an American nurse who committed suicide while listening to the LP - for many, the name Black Sabbath would become synonymous with Satanism throughout the '70s and '80s. Deeper yet no less immediate cuts like the air-raid siren-led, politically charged "War Pigs" and the trippy, mellow doom anthem "Planet Caravan" showed a group that had far more creative gas in the tank than its detractors would have cared to admit. charts, and sold over four million copies in the U.S. Released just seven months after their debut, Paranoid, the very antithesis of the sophomore slump, would spawn two of their biggest singles in "Iron Man" and the nervy, hard-hitting title track, the latter of which would be the band's only Top Ten hit - the LP went straight to the top of the U.K. With the surprise success of Black Sabbath, the band wasted little time in getting back into the studio. Top 40, eventually going certified platinum. Top Ten and hold court for over a year on the U.S. Flush with eventual genre classics like "The Wizard," "N.I.B.," and the aforementioned title cut, Black Sabbath was initially dismissed by critics - retrospective reviews were far more reverent - but it managed to reach the U.K. The record was released on Friday the 13th, which helped kick-start the band's reputation for populating the fertile crime scene that is history with plenty of blood spatter. Only a handful of guitar overdubs - Iommi's signature sound was lent considerable gravitas by the fact that he tuned his guitar a half-step down to provide some slack for a pair of fingers that saw their tips removed in a factory accident - along with the rain, thunder, and tolling bells that so effectively introduced the group to the world, would be added later. Released via Vertigo Records, the more progressive subsidiary of Philips/Phonogram, the bulk of the Rodger Bain-produced LP was recorded in a single day.
The resulting "Black Sabbath," a funereal slab of blast furnace-forged dread built around the augmented fourth/tritonic interval, better known as the devil's interval, would serve as the opening volley on their explosive eponymous 1970 debut. The transition from Earth to Black Sabbath took place the following year, after Osbourne and Butler penned a song that was inspired by the 1963 Boris Karloff horror film of the same name. They enlisted the services of Butler and Osbourne, both of whom had played together in a group called Rare Breed, and by the end of the year were operating under the moniker Earth. The band formed in 1968 under the ill-fitting name the Polka Tulk Blues Band - Iommi and Ward, who had just left the pub blues outfit Mythology, were looking to take the genre in a more robust direction. When paired with Bill Ward's economical yet formidable work behind the kit and Osbourne's primal tenor, the effect was both powerful and accessible - a blueprint for aspiring decibel pushers of every skill level. The band distilled the smoke and strife of its industrial hometown into a punitive blast of doom-laden heavy blues-rock via bass player Geezer Butler's dystopian lyrics, which leaned heavily on the occult, and guitarist Tony Iommi's seismic riffing. An English hard rock institution whose influence on heavy metal cannot be overstated, Black Sabbath not only pioneered the genre, they helped launch the career of one of its most colorful and controversial characters in Ozzy Osbourne.
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