After the Sabbath: Experiment and Fracture (1973–75) | Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Sabotage

This time I’ll start with a question. I genuinely don’t understand why so many Sabbath fans seem to believe that the Ozzy era ended after their fourth album. That view is completely off, baseless, and casually erases some of the strongest material the band ever recorded.

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973)

You could try to pin it on the presence of Rick Wakeman from Yes, who played keyboards on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, the band’s fifth album, released in 1973. For the first time, synthesized keyboards appear, and in a few isolated moments, they slightly overshadow the guitar work. The result is a cold, spacey feel, typical of early prog rock bands, and it sits awkwardly on top of Sabbath’s blues-rooted heaviness. But as we already started to see on the previous album, the band’s shift toward new directions and experiments with different styles was not only welcome – it had become expected.

Another theory might be that the album’s cover, with its demons, skull, and beast-number theatrics, could easily be misread as a return to the horror style of the debut. But Sabbath Bloody Sabbath follows a softer musical line. A little more polished. A little more composed.

The title track, “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath”, opens the album and is one of Sabbath’s most recognizable songs. It starts with a riff that’s impossible to forget and carries an energy that runs through the entire record. “Sabbra Cadabra” and “Killing Yourself to Live” drive that energy forward. “Looking for Today” and “Spiral Architect” are calmer, but still compelling. The instrumental “Fluff” puts the spotlight on keys and strings. The strangest moment on the album is “Who Are You”, almost completely wrapped in harsh metallic synths that replace Iommi’s usual lead guitar. It doesn’t sound like anything else on the album – or like anything else the band ever recorded. Still, I think the obsession with the synths or with the addition of strings, which had already made a small appearance on Vol. 4, misses the real highlight of this record.

The true shift here is Ozzy’s vocal performance. His delivery improves dramatically. He reaches places he hadn’t touched before. The best example is “A National Acrobat”. It is a masterpiece. No other word fits. A real gem in Sabbath’s catalogue.

Vol. 4 started the band’s musical experiments. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath simply continued the process in a logical way, while still holding tight to their heavy rock foundation, even if it was now laced with keyboards or other non-traditional instrumentation. Compared to the earlier records, which were rougher and rawer, this one shows Sabbath pulling their sound into a completely new level of precision and refinement. In their original form, this is their most elegant and most composed album.

Sabotage (1975)

In 1975, Black Sabbath released Sabotage, an album recorded at a time when things inside the band – especially with the over-drunk, over-stoned version of Ozzy – were starting to fall apart. Sadly, this is also the first album of theirs where certain moments managed to embarrass me to the point of actual blushing. Beyond Ozzy’s “Homo in a Kimono” pose on the cover (quote, quote), there are parts of this record that feel like they never should have made it past rehearsal. In interviews, the band claimed the bizarre cover photo was the label’s idea and that they never approved it.

Sabotage includes some incredible tracks that feel like the best of what Sabbath had managed to squeeze out of themselves across the five albums that came before. “Hole in the Sky”, the opening track, is gritty and full of energy. “Symptom of the Universe” is one of the heaviest Sabbath ever wrote, sounding like an early draft of what would later be called thrash metal. The song comes with a crushing guitar solo and ends with a stunning acoustic twist and a truly powerful vocal section. “Megalomania” is a long, complex piece that builds over nine minutes until it explodes into a wall of riffs. “The Writ” closes the album on a dark and unsettled note.

At this point, I have to go back to the synths introduced on the previous album. Where the electronics on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath felt like a fresh and interesting development, on Sabotage they start to sound more like annoying leeches. “Thrill of It All” begins strong, classic Sabbath through and through, but the ending – that overly sweet, synth-heavy finale – leaves it sounding like a lightweight pop track. “Supertzar” is a strange instrumental with dramatic, ominous choir humming. It could have been called interesting, but then the harp and xylophone kick in and drag the whole thing into something ridiculous. The next track completely broke me. The synths, shinier and friendlier than ever, keep hammering through “Am I Going Insane”, which sounds more like a bloated parody of Sabbath than a Sabbath song.

What’s most interesting about Sabotage is that it continues the experimental thread from the previous album while also clearly returning to the aggression of the earlier records. For me, the best way to describe it is as a blend of Paranoid or Master of Reality with Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. In many ways it’s angrier and more brutal than Vol. 4 and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, but it also continues the band’s musical exploration – only now that exploration has taken on a more pop-flavored, pompous tone.

If I had the chance to rewrite Sabbath’s history, I would quietly cut a few tracks from this album and leave behind a killer heavy rock record. Since I can’t really do that, what I’m left with is still a killer heavy rock record. I would just prefer it with fewer songs.