![]() There are some claims that the band was named after the movie Black Sabbath starring Boris Karloff, and there was also a book by the same name from the pen of horror writer Dennis Wheatley. ![]() There’s a bit of controversy over where the name Black Sabbath actually came from. The only problem was that there was another band in England already named Earth, so they ended up having to change the name. Black Sabbath was a compromise name, as the band was originally named (the very hippy sounding) Earth. Certainly the name “Black Sabbath” is not a beacon of light, but it certainly wasn’t meant to be an ode to a black mass. While Black Sabbath would cultivate a rather sinister image, much of that was unwarranted. (Some of those black masses featured English Witches Alex and Maxine Sanders, yay?) Lyrically, the songs have almost a Pagany vibe, that is before the choruses kick in calling for Lucifer. Black Widow played the Satan stuff up to the hilt, even going so far as to conduct black masses between songs at concerts. While Black Widow sounded more like Jethro Tull than Black Sabbath, they were often confused for a heavy metal band, saxophone solos be damned! Black Widow scored a minor hit in Great Britain with Come to the Sabbat (which I kind of like) off of their debut record Sacrifice. The second rock band to openly embrace the occult, was the English Black Widow (yes, you guessed it, people confused them a lot with Black Sabbath back in 1970). If you want a good laugh and enjoy hearing people yell “Kiss the Goat,” Coven’s Black Mass is worth a listen. Despite being released by a mainstream record label, the album was quickly forgotten, though the band did initially attract a lot of media attention. The album even featured a recording of a “Satanic Black Mass” on side two. Their first album, Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls, sounded like middle of the road 1969-hippy music, but the band looked like agents of the dark one on the cover, clad mostly in black standing next to a skull. The first was “Coven,” a band with its roots firmly in that hotbed of Satanic activity that was the American Midwest. There had been a couple of major label bands before Sabbath that very publicly embraced the Devil. The truth of it is that Sabbath came to Satan’s table kind of late, and they only came to it grudgingly. There are a lot of people out there who think that Sabbath was the first in a long line of bands influenced by Lucifer. Down-tuning makes the strings lighter, and therefore easier to press down.) That was the first part of the equation that would create heavy metal, the second part was the band’s aura, an aura created almost entirely out of the public’s perception that Black Sabbath was a Satanic rock band. It’s that hand that he uses to press down the strings. Iommi uses his right hand on the frets of his guitar. (For those of you who don’t play guitar, I should probably elaborate a little bit. That horrible accident changed the sound of Iommi’s guitar, making it deeper, darker, and kind of menacing. ![]() Sabbath guitar player Tony Iommi almost single handedly created the genre when he was forced to start “down-tuning” his guitar after an industrial accident chopped off the tips of the fingers on his left hand. The Sabs were the first ever heavy metal band, and there’s very little debate about it. The biggest difference between Black Sabbath and those bands is that Sabbath invented a sub-genre of music almost entirely on their own: Heavy Metal. They sit on the classic rock Rushmore, alongside bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and The Who. Without question, Black Sabbath is one of the all-time great rock bands.
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