Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut celebrates its 40^th birthday this year. Actually, February 13^th marked the day in 1970 (which was a Friday that year) when the landmark album was released, but being the beer swilling, convention bucking beasts we are here at All Things Heavy, we’re getting to the party a bit late. Surely there will be plenty of articles in various publications – metal and otherwise – explaining how influential the Drab Four’s first album was on rock history. I mean, it’s the one release in the history of modern music that can be claimed to have birthed an entire genre on its own. And is that reason enough to pay tribute to it? Sure it is. As metalheads, we wouldn’t be here without it. (The term “metalhead” wouldn’t even be around for crying out loud!)

You see, before Black Sabbath, there was no metal, and there was no gradual build to create its sounds and conventions from some extended lineage, like, say, jazz or folk or rock before it, though it does have traces of the blues. Sure, hard rock already existed. Acts like Led Zeppelin, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Steppenwolf (to whom the term “heavy metal” is often credited in the song “Born to Be Wild”) had taken good old rock ‘n roll and dirtied it up plenty, adding a nice helping of sex, drugs and distortion to its already controversial framework. But it still wasn’t metal; the nasty, gritty, destructive stuff we know and love today. This is where our album of honor comes in.

Metal’s creation was sudden and violent, with little warning. A thunderclap, the drizzle of rainfall at midnight, a foreboding bell tolling in the distance and suddenly, chaos from nothing. Heavy metal’s Big Bang explodes as the Devil’s Interval echoes those three (in)famous guitar notes: bum-BUM-bummm. And just like that, a genre is born. Pure. Evil. Brilliant.

The importance of the record’s first track cannot be understated, as it not only signified heavy metal’s arrival, but began a trend employing what we in music criticism circles call “the triple threat.” That is, when a band’s name, album name and song name are the same. Fellow Brits Iron Maiden and numerous other bands with the cojones to imitate would soon follow suit. “Black Sabbath” wasn’t so much an introduction as a mission statement for an entire culture that exists to this day. The occult themes – sung in a quivering, dramatic style by a young John Michael Osbourne (AKA Ozzy) – about a darkened figure choosing him for some unknown, horrific purpose set a standard for lyrical motifs within the genre. Hell, Ozzy even namedrops the Evil One himself (twice, actually) before the opening number’s double time coda/guitar freakout. How’s that for an entrance? Well it’s just the beginning.

With a whaling harmonica and stutter step drum cadence, “The Wizard” quickly drops into the album’s first true groove. Here we get a glimpse of the one muse more important to Sabbath than Satan: drugs, and lots of them. Subsequent releases saw Ozzy hit us upside the head with narcotic references – Master of Reality’s, “Sweet Leaf” was essentially a love song to a certain herb and Volume 4’s, “Snowblind” made no secret of the band’s love for cocaine – but here we get more subtle lyrics, wherein the titular wizard is a metaphor for a drug dealer spreading happiness to his clientele.

It is at this point where the record gets confusing. Depending on what format you own, what year you bought it and what edition it is, you’ll be getting a different tracklist. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll go by my 1996 remastered CD edition, which has the original pressing’s five tracks split into eight, with the last three suites each being separated to their own runtimes.

This brings us to two more original compositions: “Behind the Wall of Sleep” and “N.I.B.” The first is a melodic, bouncy tune that manages to pull the listener away from the dark proceedings on the rest of the record. “N.I.B.,” however, is a standout for its introduction bass solo, in which Geezer Butler runs his instrument through a wah-wah pedal to achieve its otherworldly tone. And then, the almighty riff. Memorable, groovy, and like all great early metal riffs, easy enough for anyone with a few weeks of guitar lessons under their belt to play. Previous rock bands had proven it was possible to base entire songs off of one riff, but it was Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi who established it as the foundation for an entire genre.

On Black Sabbath, and especially on “N.I.B.,” Iommi became heavy metal’s Riffmaster General, inspiring scores of longhaired kids to pick up Gibson SGs and bang out power chords in search of the magic he wielded in his five fretting fingers. Actually, make that three and a few halves. You see, Sabbath formed in late-60s Birmingham, England, an industrial wasteland that made Charles Dickens’ turn of the century London look like Maui. In order to make ends meet, the band had to work in less than desirable locations. For Iommi, that was a sheet metal factory. On his last day of work, he caught the middle and ring finger of his right hand in a machine, losing the tips of both. Seeing as he was a southpaw, this accident spelled certain doom for his fret hand. As the legend now goes among metal fans, Iommi, determined to play, fashioned artificial finger tips out of the melted caps of plastic soap bottles. In typical heavy metal tradition, he had crafted something from nothing and, in doing so, had firmly tied the genre’s roots to a blue collar, workmanlike attitude.

It is this attitude that connected the band with the blues, a fascination first explored in their cover of Crow’s “Evil Woman,” where the band delves deeper than Lucifer, Hell and all that occult mumbo jumbo for the even more confounding territory of human relationships. Slightly out of place on a record with a predominately shadier edge, the track works as a transition and mid-point. A palette cleansing, if you will, and it’s a nice little upbeat affair.

For my money though, the album’s finest moment begins with the moody atmospherics of, “Sleeping Village,” when a Jew’ harp introduction leads into a descending riff pattern until the band gets low and slow, with bent notes galore from Iommi. A galloping bassline from Butler picks up the slack as two separate guitar solos battle in both channels. Bill Ward’s trademark heavy-handed drumming pounds out a few final toms fills and an eerie feeback leads us into the heart of the beast: a cover of Retaliation’s, “Warning.” Ozzy puts his heart on his sleeve, as his perpetually stoned caterwaul cracks at the line, “I was born without you baby, but my feelings were a little bit too strong,” before Iommi’s lysergic leads shift from left to right and back again and Ward rolls headfirst into the defining minutes of the heavy metal sound. Iommi drops into a molasses thick chug and proceeds to melt the strings from his instrument over multiple solos, setting the standard for overindulgence. Is it necessary? Hell no. Is it awesome? Praise Satan, yes.

For the next seven minutes it’s all Iommi until a reserved noodling session leads into one last push as Ward forces the rest of the band back in with a few snare strikes and Butler and Ozzy take their positions like nothing happened, falling right back in rhythm for what is, on many editions, the finale of the record. It would be the ending track on my copy if it weren’t for the addition of the laid back, jam oriented “Wicked World.” As riffy and cool as this track is, it be even more fitting if it were back in its original spot at the middle of the album’s sequence between the two suites. Instead of the drop-out-of-life, album ending epic on the original release, this edition ends on kind of a neutral note.

The point of this walk through is that in our 21^st Century era of soulless, flawless recordings, Black Sabbath’s imperfections are also the reason it deserves to sit next to Led Zeppelin IV and Electric Ladyland in rock’s upper echelon of classic albums. Producer Rodger Bain gave the record an organic, distinctly 70s quality that would follow through to their next two LPs. The entire thing was recorded live in one day, and it sounds like it. Iommi’s guitar crunches and squeals, originating the fuzzy, vintage tone so many modern doom and stoner rock bands shell out thousands for used Sunn and Orange tube amps to imitate. Butler’s bass is always present (a feat in of itself, considering modern rock’s kibosh on anything but a nonexistent bottom end), whether it’s holding the rhythm while his six-string brother is soloing away or locking into Ward’s ramblin’ wreck grooves.

The drum work is easily my favorite aspect of this record. Ward’s ham fisted cymbal bashing and simple meters belie the fact that he’s essentially playing blues/jazz/rock fusion here. Like all great drummers, his work is deceptively complex and takes multiple listens to grasp many of its’ nuances. And the production! Oh, that gloriously dry drum mix. Booming kicks with a pulse you can feel in your own veins, toms that thud and thump with just enough high end to make them discernable and a snare with a sharp attack and clean finish with every whack. Leave it to a live recording to make a drum set sound so dead – and therefore so utterly vibrant and alive. Listen to the way his toms resonate in the spaces between Iommi’s sparse chords in “Black Sabbath,” filling every void with a palpable sense of dread. There’s no Pro Tools or trigger trickery at work here, kids; just a dude battering his kit with a few mics scattered around the room to capture the abuse.

With their debut, Black Sabbath managed to alienate critics – who, for the most part, loathed the record upon its release – and build a small but budding fanbase of likeminded wayward youth in the process. At a time when British rock was meant to be “progressive” and artistic, to break away from its simplistic American origins and take the genre to a new plane, the four grungy SOBs from Birmingham deconstructed everything in a 41-minute crash course in heavy music’s three “d”s: drugs, death and doom. Top that off with the unnerving cover art tying in with the darkened figure central to the title track’s narrative and you’re left with what is still the heaviest, grooviest and most influential record in this genre’s extended canon. On behalf of the All Things Heavy team: happy birthday, metal.