Paranoid vs Master of Reality
The big question in metal's now 43 year old history is “what is the finest album by Black Sabbath, the band who started it all?” I thought “hey, that's a perfect entry for the Poseur Cave journal”, and decided to bitch about it. Now, I must confess to only having heard these two albums, and merely bits of the others. That's cool though, since these two seem to be everyone's favourites, and therefore the ones most suitable for comparison.
Here goes...
They both have eight tracks, and that's perfect, because then I can do a side-by-side-ish comparison, starting at...
Track 1
“Boom!” goes the guitar in War Pigs opening riff, the start of an amazing song, one of the best on the album IMO. It's counterpart, Sweet Leaf is dedicated to marijuana. Well, it was 1971, what can you expect?
Paranoid wins this one. Clearly.
Track 2
I'm not saying Paranoid is a bad song, but I do think it's a bad follow-up to War Pigs. It's pretty dull in comparison.
Master of Reality wins this one just by keeping on track.
Track 3
Planet Caravan, and now we can't even see the track (you know, the one they went off) anymore. This would fit on a Pink Floyd album or something. Embryo is not much better, but I view it as an introduction of sorts to the next track, they're even merged together on the
Live at Last album. Anyway, it's a tie, since none of the tracks fit in particularly well.
Track 4
Hard one. These are maybe the best tracks from each album (alright, War Pigs and Fairies Wear Boots are great competition). I choose Children of the Grave, it's my favourite Black Sabbath song and very powerful.
Track 5
I really want to give Orchid this one, but it's counterpart is Electric Funeral. Electric Funeral is so doomy it'd kill any flower, orchids included. Orchid could easily win against many other tracks, but it's not metal, for those who care.
Track 6
A standout track versus a not-so-outstanding track? Hmm, yeah. Lord of this World, definitely. Heavy and bluesy. Me like.
Track 7
Here's that space rock thing again. And an instrumental, but that's fine, because it wins. It's pretty cool, despite having no vocals. That drum solo or whatever it is really shouldn't be there, though.
Track 8
Oh. Uuuhm, yeah. Hard one. Fairies Wear Boots is one of my favourites, and so is Into the Void, yet the drug-trip thing can't beat the thick doom thing. That means Into the Void wins.
Paranoid gets three points,
Master of Reality gets four. That means the latter wins, but only just (though it should get bonus points for the album cover).