Sabotage (1975)

I never had this one back in the day. 

I had the Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath cassette I told you about last time, The Headless Cross, and, eventually, We Sold Our Soul For Rock and Roll, the Ozzy-era compilation. My brother had The Mob Rules and so I heard that one a lot, too. (As I was just discussing in the comments from last time, Sabbath wasn't really a part of the "active" 80s metal discussion - at least the MTV/metal-press part of it.) The only song from Sabotage to make We Sold Our Soul For Rock and Roll was “Am I Going Insane (radio)” * and it wasn't really a favorite, so it never occurred to me to pick it up. 

* I never understand that (radio) bit until looking this album up for this post. It's Cockney-rhyming-slang for "going mental," i.e. "radio rental."

Cut to the 21st century and of course you can listen to anything you want, practically, on YouTube or elsewhere. But I still somehow never really knew this one start-to-finish until 2021, and the effect was like getting a new Sabbath-mk-1 record, something I didn’t think was possible. (Technically, it and the next two albums are all in the same boat in this regard, but neither Technical Ecstasy or Never Say Die are in Sabotage's league. We'll get to those next time, though.) Don’t let the cover fool you: this is one of the band's best.

And hey okay, let's talk about that cover. Holy moley that is dreadful. 

Apparently this was one of those by-the-time-we-found-out-it-was-too-late-to-do-anything-else things. That seems unlikely, though - I mean, they just put out two covers that weren't even covers not too long before, this, couldn't they just put out another fake-cover like Master of Reality? Here's what I think: Tony and Geezer look cool, and Ozzy probably thought he looked cool. (Bill's hopeless; that doubling-effect in the mirror makes him unfortunately look like a twisted Humpty-Dumpty. Why is he wearing his wife's red tights?) 

So they said hey, two out of four (okay Ozzy, sure, three out of four, whatever you say) and shrugged it off. Sorry, Bill. This theory does not seem corroborated by any of the band's recollecting, but makes sense to me. Anyway, it was no one from photographer's to designer's to band member's idea, apparently, just a combination of failures on many parts.

Let's get thing started with yet another blistering side one opener:

Hole in the Sky

If you’re asking questions of metal that this song doesn’t answer, I think you need to go back to… the question store? Sorry, thatone really got away from me. But I mean it: you can expand in directions away from this song, but you really cannot reduce metal beyond this point. It's like boiling out everything but some compound's essence or some irreducable equation I could point to to justify how ass-kickingly awesome this song is or how many times I've cranked it and scared my kids the past two months. Everything from the buzzsaw guitar to the smashing cymbals to the screaming Ozzy seems to be tailor-made for my own metal tastes.

As ever, part of that reason for that is undoubtedly that Black Sabbath played such a formative role in my own metal tastes. But most of the reason is just hey, this song really rocks. 

I don't know what to make of some of the lyrics, though. "And even though I'm sitting waiting for Mars / I don't believe there's any future in cars." Hrrm.

Don’t Start (Too Late)

Just a little ditty/ intro to:

Symptom of the Universe

I picture someone, let's say Frank Sinatra, could just as easily have been my grandfather, hearing this in 1975 and having one of those Fall of Ancient Rome moments, like within these sounds is the sound of your own doom, the banshee come down from the mountain. ("Keep away! Keep away!") 

How would Elvis have reacted? On one level he'd have denounced Sabbath as druggies and probably used that deputy badge Nixon gave him to try and set up a sting of some kind. On another, he probably pantomimed a karate move or two and swallowed a few more uppers. 

Regardless, here's a commonly held Sabbath classic; how many have we heard so far? I've lost count. If you isolate each section, there's really nothing special going on here (and even some annoying enunciation Ozzy brings to some of the lines - nothing to sink the awesomeness, just a few lines where you have to question his asylum-garbled reading of the line. Ozzy gotta Ozzy, whattyagonnado) The riff is cool enough, but it's just open-E-string stuff. Bong Metal 101. Ditto for the bass. The way Bill joins the riff (riding that crash symbol) is cool - and Kyuss must have thought so, too, as they do the same on "Green Machine" - but again, nothing special, really. But combine them all and "YEEEEEEEAAAAAAH!"

And to top it all off, those last couple of sections are cool as hell, too. 

Megalomania

“Why don’t you just get out of my life ?
Why doesn’t everybody leave me alone?”

Ahh, back to nightmare rock. I’m not the biggest fan of that fade-in looped effect on Ozzy’s voice, but once again, OGO. Sort of like YOLO, but the Ozzy version. This song’s pretty epic and would make for some good horror fuel in the right venue.

The Thrill of It All

Oh man! That second riff can cut through timber. Ozzy’s voice, too. Has anyone tried any logging with this song? At the right speed, I bet it would be deadly. I can picture the fifty foot speakers trucked into some stand of timber and the scientists with their clipboards. Fire it up and find the right RPM-speed.

And then the whole other section with the “OH YEAH!” parts and those spaceship keys. Great stuff. As great a side two opener as "Killing Yourself To Live" was on the previous record.

"Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it / cuz I got no reason to lie.

Forget your problems that don't even exist / and I'll show you a way to get high."

Supertzar

Epic, with the choir and all. I love that title.

“Am I Going Insane (Radio)” 

That ending laughter montage is all fun and games until that one laugh – you know the one I mean – starts up and then isolates. That is a disturbing sound right there. It's all the more prominent on the beginning of:

The Writ / Blow on a Jug

Good lord, that laugh. WTF.

For some reason I picture a disco ball going with this one, especially with Ozzy coming in with all that intensity and the sustained chord ringing out. It has that mid-70s ambience to me. Also plenty of Ozzy-fury and a fireworks display of metal bonafides. Great ending to the album. Ozzy's vocals falter a little in the last section, but still a nice send-off. 

"Are you Satan, are you man?
You've changed a lot since it began."

~

Although there are two albums left to go in the Ozzy era, with Sabotage, the high water mark has been reached. Which is not to say there is not more compelling music and Sabbath saga to come; perish the thought.

The album is titled what it is because apparently they woke up to how much money had been siphoned off their earnings to that point and spent their time split in the studio between all the legal wrangling related to this. It's easy to forget that these albums were all platinum sellers. I think Sabbath were all paying taxes in the UK, so they made a lot of other people rich before they saw dime one. (Or shilling one, I should say.) But I don't know the ins and outs, only that, like many successful bands at some point, they took a closer look at their business arrangements and didn't like what they were seeing. You can miss a lot when you're focusing on the coke and tours or "the scene" part of being a rock star and not the bottom line. It's understandable. It's also what rapacious music industry types live for. Be wary, be watchful; always have someone sober in the band.

See you next time.