ROUND TWO!
How about
Album Covers? Well
Black Sabbath wins it easily here: a dark, scary, somewhat ambiguous picture that manages to be both evil and harmless at once, while with
Paranoid there's an out-of-focus blurred shot of some guy with a sword.
Get in!
Black Sabbath 5,
Paranoid 11
Black Sabbath comes out swinging at the bell, surprising an overconfident Paranoid, which thought its opponent down and out. Paranoid reels back, unaccustomed to taking punches, and Black Sabbath presses home its advantage.
Producer? No, the same producer (Rodger Bain) worked on both albums, so it's a no-score draw, leaving the overall total unchanged. What else?
Let's pit the
Opening Tracks against each other, then the
Closing Tracks. Opener on
Black Sabbath is of course “Black Sabbath”, and how can you win against that? Well,
Paranoid has “War pigs”, so it's closer than you would think. But for sheer impact upon the world of heavy metal and for those scary, disturbing but wonderful first three notes that heralded the birth of Heavy Metal,
Black Sabbath has to get my vote.
Black Sabbath 6,
Paranoid 11
Black Sabbath punches, ducks and dives, lands a few killer blows. Blood in its eyes has turned now to bloodlust, and it fights like a thing possessed. Unsure after all this time, and having anticipated an easy victory, Paranoid dances away...
Closers then?
Black Sabbath has “Warning” while
Paranoid has “Fairies wear boots”. I think this has to go to the underdog (at this moment) again, not only for the sheer epicity of the closer on the debut, but also the fact that the closer on
Paranoid mentions fairies. Ugh!
Black Sabbath 7,
Paranoid 11
Black Sabbath follows Paranoid around the ring, murder in its eyes and Paranoid, seeing the change in its opponent, flinches back, looking for an opportunity to get some blows in. But Black Sabbath's defence is good and Paranoid cannot land a single punch. The crowd rises to its feet, suddenly cheering the underdog. Those who have bet on Paranoid sulk grumpily or exhort the opponent to make a fight of it!
Lyrical Content is very important. On
Black Sabbath we have a song about, possibly, Satan being chosen or something, the antichrist maybe? Who the hell knows? But it's dark and unnerving. Then we have a song about a wizard, nightmares and then the devil getting married? Followed up with a really pastoral little lyric about, well, a sleeping village and ending on the big heavy broken love affair in “Warning”. Mind you, they do have to lose points for having a cover version on their first album, so let's score the tracks out of 10 for lyrics, where 10 is a great and different and interesting lyric, and 1 is pure crap.
“Black Sabbath” 10 (obviously)
“The wizard” 8
“Behind the wall of sleep” 8
“NIB” 10
“Evil woman” 1
“Sleeping village” 10 (I award it such a high mark because it's so unexpected and so simple, yet it works so well. It's the last thing you'd expect to hear Ozzy singing about on this dark album of dark albums)
“Warning” 7 (It's a little cliched, though not too much)
So that's a total, out of
70, of
54. Not bad. Now how about its rival?
Start off with “War pigs”, totally class anti-war song, followed up by the title track, with warning of manic depression and possibly suicide, then “Planet caravan” earns points for being totally different and a real change of pace, before we hit another classic, the superb “Iron man”, about, well, a man of iron. A giant man of iron, of course. And that's just the A side!
So, scores then:
“War pigs” 10 (of course)
“Paranoid” 10
“Planet caravan” 8
“Iron man” 10
“Electric funeral” 8
“Hand of doom” 8
“Rat sald” 6
“Fairies wear boots” 5
A grand total of
65 out of
80.
So it's very close, and I'm going to call it a draw. However, rather than last time, with a nil-nil deal, I think both albums have earned their points here so we'll make it a 1-1 score. That leaves the current standings at
Black Sabbath 8,
Paranoid 12
Caught in a clinch, each fighter strives to best the other, but neither can land a blow. After some moments, the ref blows his whistle and forces them apart. The two opponents eye each other, warily, tired, but determined, and return to their corners.
ROUND THREE!
Now we come to what I like to call
“Off-tracks”, that is, tracks that seem out of place or that don't quite look or sound like they belong on the album.
Black Sabbath has the cover version “Evil woman”, but everything else is pretty cool. I would venture to say “Sleeping village” is an off-track though.
Paranoid on the other hand has really only “Planet caravan”, so it looks like
Paranoid takes it again.
Black Sabbath 8,
Paranoid 13
Determined to go on the offensive, Paranoid launches at Black Sabbath, a flurry of blows landing about its head and shoulders. No, not the shampoo!
Chart Positions you say? We don' need no steenking chart positions! Ah but we do, and here we find
Black Sabbath topping out in the US at 23, UK at 8 while
Paranoid does considerably better, making 12 in the US and topping the charts in the UK, giving Sabbath their first number one album. Again,
Paranoid wins this round.
Black Sabbath 8,
Paranoid 14
Suddenly, Paranoid sees an opening and darts in! Its newfound confidence its undoing, Black Sabbath is taken by surprise and reels back.
What about
Critical Acclaim? Both albums were more or less slated originally, but time was much kinder to them and eventually both were recognised as important, even vital albums in the heavy metal genre, if not in fact the very first ones which could be properly termed as heavy metal. Who did best, or did anyone, with the passage of time?
Black Sabbath: panned on its release, later hailed as the coming of heavy metal and the album that started it all.
Paranoid pretty much the same. Calling it a no-score draw here.
More dancing, more feinting, the crowd get restless as neither fighter commits to an attack, watching their opponent, waiting, waiting...
Are there any
Bonus Tracks, or were any
Special Editions released? Let's see... looks like there were three special editions of
Black Sabbath, one released in 1986 with a bonus track (a live version of “Tomorrow's dream”) one CD reissue in 1996 with “Wicked world” as a bonus and two reissues in 2009, with separate and different tracklistings for both the European and US editions. Yeah, there seems to have been some other reissue in 2004, but the only “bonus track” on that was “Evil woman”, which wasn't apparently included on the original US version, so I'm ignoring that one.
Paranoid seems to have had just the one reissue, in 2009, and although there are extra tracks they're all just alternate versions of the original songs. Another 1986 reissue did however feature a live version of “Wicked world”. Nevertheless, I think
Black Sabbath gets this one.
Black Sabbath 9,
Paranoid 14
WHAM! Black Sabbath suddenly launches an attack, catching Paranoid off guard. Paranoid staggers under the unexpected blow, legs wobbling. The crowd begin baying for blood again. Men rise to their feet. People nervously think about the "sure thing" they bet on before the fight...
Let's go back to
Track-by-track Analysis and look at the actual
Structure of the albums. Though few if any tracks can be said to be bad, did the positioning of each work in the overall context of the album? For
Black Sabbath you have the title track followed by “The wizard”, which is perfect, then “Behind the wall of sleep”, which is mostly more a kind of hard rock/blues boogie, but fits in well, and then NIB, again perfect. Unfortunately then comes the cover of “Evil woman”, which breaks the pattern, then the quiet reflective “Sleeping village” establishes a semblance of eerie quiet before “Warning” brings it all to a crushing close. So other than the cover, pretty much perfect.
Paranoid couldn't start better, with “War pigs” then the title track, with the flow broken nicely by the lush “Planet caravan”, and followed up by “Iron man”. One hundred percent perfect first side. The doomy and perfectly titled “Electric funeral” is a natural successor to “Iron man”, with “Hand of doom” keeping everything dark and bleak until “Rat salad” provides some light relief as the tempo increases and we get a blues rocker with some Santana in there, and closing on “Fairies wear boots”, great track with some fine humour.
So
Paranoid has no bad tracks, in terms of flow, whereas
Black Sabbath does suffer slightly from the inclusion of the cover, and therefore loses out this round.
Black Sabbath 9,
Paranoid 15
Spurred on by the crowd's taunts, Paranoid steels itself and launches into an attack which takes its opponent by surprise. Black Sabbath was beginning to think there was no fight left in Paranoid, but now it's the one reeling back under a hail of punches...
Now we go to see how many tracks from each appear on
Sabbath Compilations. Although there are eight collections in all, “The Dio years” covers, well, the Dio years, so we'll leave that one out. Also “The Sabbath stones” features material the earliest of which was released in 1983. That's out too. Not to mention that “Black Box” is a collection of every Sabbath album in its entireity up to 1978. Oh, and “The rules of Hell” is yet another Dio compilation, leaving us with four compilations to consider.
We sold our soul for Rock'n'roll (1976):-
Black Sabbath, 5 tracks;
Paranoid, 4 tracks.
Symptom of the universe (2002):-
Black Sabbath, 5 tracks;
Paranoid, 4 tracks
Greatest Hits (2006):-
Black Sabbath, 3 tracks;
Paranoid, 3 tracks
Greatest Hits (2009):-
Black Sabbath, 4 tracks;
Paranoid, 4 tracks
For some reason the collection I have, the cool one with the painting “El triumfo de la muerte” on it, is not included. Seems it's not an official version or something. Boo. Anyway, what have we gleaned from this then? Well, two of the collections offer equal space to both albums, using four tracks from each, but where there's a difference it's
Black Sabbathh that gets the nod, with 5 tracks from it on two compilations whereas its rival only gets 4. So
Black Sabbath takes this one.
Black Sabbath 10,
Paranoid 15
After a brief and sudden flurry of attack Paranoid is driven back by the fury of an opponent growing in confidence. Black Sabbath has it on the ropes now.
The last criterion I can explore is how various magazines, websites and even personal lists rate the two albums against each other. So I've gone trawling the web and the results are below. Some rate one album over the other, while some don't rate one at all while rating the other. I'll tally up the total at the end.
VHI Top 40 Metal songs: "Iron man" and "Paranoid"
Kerrang! Top 100 metal albums: Paranoid 39,
Black Sabbath 31
Metal Hammer same:
Paranoid 9,
Black Sabbath 13
Guitar World Best 10 metal albums: Paranoid 1 ,
Black Sabbath not there
Some loser on RYM:
Black Sabbath 46,
Paranoid 13 (He also has “Close to the fu
cking edge” on his list!!!
Another loser (Seriously? Marillion? Queen??)
Black Sabbath 56,
Paranoid 9
Metal rules.com ---
Black Sabbath 17,
Paranoid 24
metal descent.com: Black Sabbath 8,
Paranoid 1
Village Voice: ten metal albums you must hear before you die: Black Sabbath 1,
Paranoid nowhere
Vinyrevinyl: essential metal albums: Paranoid 3,
Black Sabbath nowhere
Digitaldreamdoor: 100 best heavy metal guitar riffs: Black Sabbath 2,
Paranoid 4
Music radar.com: Black Sabbath 37,
Paranoid 7
So altogether then we have a total amount of votes from these lists --- where one was placed above the other or one did not feature while the other did – of
Black Sabbath: 4
Paranoid: 8
So
Paranoid clearly gets it here, leaving the current standings at
Black Sabbath 10,
Paranoid 16
Thought to be on the verge of defeat, Paranoid finds reserves of strength from somewhere and fights back, pushing Black Sabbath towards the other side of the ring. The crowd goes wild. THIS is what they came to see! What a contest!
One more thing to factor in; well, two really.
Impact on the genre/music as a whole has to go to
Black Sabbath, so it now stands at
Black Sabbath 11,
Paranoid 16
Black Sabbath rallies, throwing a series of punches at its opponent, who moves back...
and finally, and definitely least, your own snipings on my thread about Metal Month II, wherein the general consensus was that, of those who bothered to vote,
Black Sabbath came out on top by 4-2, so one more for the debut.
Black Sabbath 12,
Paranoid 16.
... onto the ropes, where Black Sabbath continues to pound on its opponent. The fight has turned completely 180 now. Are fortunes, thought safe, about to be lost at the death?
But no: the extra points count in Paranoid's favour and it rallies its strength, forcing its legs to bear it up and deliver a series of pummeling punches that floors Black Sabbath.
Eight ... nine ... TEN! You're OUT!
So we have a clear winner at the end. Although
Black Sabbath took an early pounding and looked likely to be left choking on
Paranoid's dust, it rallied well and by the end there's not that much separating the two. But in the end there can only be one, and though I don't personally agree with the result, science cannot be ignored and this is what it says:
The winner!
Not quite by a knockout but still by a vote of 16-12.
Note: If anyone thinks there is some other method I could have used, or some criteria I did not employ, well it's too late now! I honestly went through absolutely every aspect I could think of of each album to try to make sure that I covered every possible, um, possibility. I don't think there's anything more I could have done. No doubt those who agree with the verdict will nod and say justice was done, whereas those who believe (like me) that the debut is far superior will shake their fists and cry “Fix!” But in the end, it was simply a case of letting the facts do the talking, and this is their unavoidable conclusion.
Whether or not you agree with the outcome though, one thing I think we can all agree on is that these are two of the finest and most seminal albums ever to grace the genre, and for Sabbath to have recorded both in the same year is, quite simply, a phenomenal feat that I believe was never equalled.