Dad's Take:
If somebody told me I could have only one metal album in my collection, this is very likely the one I'd pick.
"Iron Man" could well be the greatest metal song, containing the One Riff to Rule Them All. I used to play it when I played Risk, as my national anthem. "Iron Man." I want to keep writing that title. If this album contained no other great songs besides "Iron Man," I'd have to have it in my collection. It's a cinematic rock suite, as close to perfection as rock has ever come.When I put this album on, it's hard to wait until the fourth song to hear this brilliant song.
As great as that classic song is, some others on this album aren't far behind, so you can't just skip ahead.. The opener, "War Pigs," for example. The song is epic in the classical sense. It's a head-banging message song from the Viet Nam era. Need I say more. And that wild ending. It's like they weren't sure where to go to end the thing, so they went crazy.
"Paranoid" is another amazing song, with a great Ozzy vocal that sounds as much like a riff as anything happening on the guitar. That guitar riff, though, is possibly the most influential riff in hard rock.
If "Iron Man" were song three instead of four, this album would open with one of the best 1-2-3 punches ever. But Sabbath takes a psychedelic break with song three, "Planet Caravan." It reminds me of some of the best work from Vanilla Fudge. I'd probably like it more if it didn't sound out of place between "Paranoid" and "Iron Man."
You'd expect me to feel let down by whatever follows "Iron Man," but "Electric Funeral" is psych metal at its best. It's a lot like "Iron Man" in its structure and even it's electrical themes, but it doesn't sound like a copycat song. And it's almost as good.
It doesn't really matter what comes next. Four of the first five songs are absolutely brilliant, and the other one is no slouch. They could stop now and have one of the greatest rock albums ever released.
But no, they give us three more songs. By this point, the best is over, but don't get me wrong. I like the Vanilla-Fudge-meets-Alice-Cooper-done-as-only-Ozzy-can-do-it feel of "Hand of Doom.""Rat Salad" is a great instrumental with the drum solo that was required at the time. I could see it going on for another five or six minutes. And "Fairies Wear Boots" is a great way to close the record, with its killer-riffs-and-drums attack on skinheads.
One of the things that makes this such a great album besides the fantastic songs and unforgettable riffs is that the album holds together. Even as great as most of the songs are, they don't kill the cohesive feel of the entire album. Brilliant stuff. Absolutely brilliant.
Ozzy, Geezer, and Tony managed what many consider the greatest metal album ever recorded, and I won't argue with anybody who makes that claim.
Brad's Take:
Black Sabbath is definitely one of those bands that has become a household name over the years. Even when I was younger, I remember my dad playing "Iron Man" in the car. And around Christmas time, he loves playing the Christmas themed "Iron Man" parody called "I Am Santa Claus" by Bob Rivers.
My favorite songs on this are probably the ones I already knew well. "War Pigs" and "Iron Man."
The majority of the album has great writing, and it's impossible to oversee that. Every member in this band rules at what they're doing. This is a band that consists of guys who are lucky to have all found each other because they compliment each other extremely well. Even Ozzy sounds great.
However, growing up in the digital age where audio recording is much more crisp, full, clean, and other adjectives for basically "perfect," I can't help but notice the aged production and tape-recorded quality, and I think that holds the album back for me. My ears have been (arguably) blessed with hearing modern hard rock albums that don't just have quality writing, but quality recording that helps compliment everything. If Paranoid was recorded today with modern equipment, this album would sound massive. The production quality dates this so much, and unfortunately that affects my opinion of the record as a whole.
The album also suffers from some of the same panning issues that I've complained about in a few past reviews. In these early days of stereo mixing, people seemed to think they should put random stuff into one speaker and other stuff in the other. On this album specifically, they put the bass guitar in only the right speaker, which I find very odd. But maybe I'm the only one that really notices that kind of thing so don't let that affect your decision to listen to this album (as if you haven't already at some point in your life.)
Overall, I didn't love the album, but the good songs are really good, and the not-as-good songs are definitely skip-able. Fortunately though, there's only 8 tracks so there's not a lot of filler at all.
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