Black Sabbath
– Sabotage
Black Sabbath weren’t just the lords of heavy—they were prisoners of their own machine. Lawsuits, burnout, and paranoia haunted every riff. Sabotage is the sound of that unraveling channeled into a brutal, brilliant mess of an album. It’s unhinged, sharp-edged, and far more experimental than anyone expected from a band that had long since patented doom. If Paranoid was the black mass, Sabotage is the exorcism gone wrong.
Best of…
Tony Iommi’s riffs still hit like tectonic shifts, but now they twist and mutate mid-track. “Symptom of the Universe” practically invents thrash, while “Megalomania” drags prog rock into a fogged-out alley and lets it scream. The production’s uneven, the transitions abrupt, and Ozzy sounds like he’s either on the brink of total clarity or completely losing it. Sometimes both in the same verse. But there’s a certain beauty to that chaos—it’s raw, ugly, and way too much, which makes it feel real in a way most metal never dares.
They didn’t tighten up—they frayed. Bill Ward and Geezer Butler take rhythmic detours that no groove metal band would dare touch now. Everything sounds just slightly off-center, like it’s about to collapse but never quite does. Sabotage is Sabbath without guardrails: neurotic, aggressive, and at times borderline psychedelic. It doesn’t want to be liked. It wants to be heard. And maybe feared.
Choice Tracks
Symptom of the Universe
A sonic freight train with Iommi launching riff after riff like he’s trying to outpace the end of the world. It opens with the force of early thrash and closes with a strange acoustic jam that feels like a band blacking out mid-jam and waking up in another genre. Wild, rough, essential.
Megalomania
Nine minutes of spiraling paranoia and self-loathing stretched over tempo shifts, eerie keys, and some of Ozzy’s most manic howling. It shouldn’t work. It barely does. But the near-collapse is part of the thrill. The track grows like mold in a damp corner—slow, strange, and consuming.
The Writ
Ozzy aiming venom straight at their management. It’s personal, vengeful, and bizarrely theatrical. The song swerves between stomping riffs and weirdly melodic sections, ending the album not with resolution, but with a scorched-earth tantrum. One of his most unfiltered performances.
Hole in the Sky
Straight out of the gate with a thunderous wallop, it lurches with apocalyptic weight. Then it cuts off mid-riff like someone yanked the plug out of the socket. It’s a weird trick, but it leaves a mark.
Sabotage isn’t Sabbath at their cleanest or most iconic. But it might be them at their most human—flawed, furious, and absolutely unwilling to go quietly.