How Master of Reality helped shape doom and stoner rock genres

How Master of Reality helped shape doom and stoner rock genres

So it’s 1971 and those crazy young guys from Birmingham have put out their third album, Master of Reality. You’ve kind of dug their first two releases, as bizarre and original as they are, and you’re keen to find out just what the hell they’ll do next. You’ve played ‘Led Zeppelin III’ and ‘Deep Purple In Rock’ to death; you’re ready for some new sounds. So you gather your friends, roll up a fat one, crank the stereo, and it’s time. You hear that loop of Tony Iommi coughing and, boom, ‘Sweet Leaf’ is blowing your mind for the first time…

Yeah, those were the days. Well, I can only guess those were the days. I was three years old and admittedly some way off actually becoming a fan. It’s a nice dream, though. Instead, it was about eleven years later that I picked up Master of Reality on vinyl. By this point, Ozzy was long gone, Dio had recorded his two albums with the band, and Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin were no more. This was effectively teenage metal archaeology, the kind that you had to do in the early stages of discovering this kind of music. So was this ancient gold or just a rotting corpse?

Well… I have to admit to always feeling some confusion about Master of Reality. Giving it a fresh spin, another 35 years down the line, I think it’s pretty clear why. The first side of the record is a wonder, but, and this is one of those big buts that nobody likes, the second side is not all that great.

It’s not totally horrible, far from it, but it just doesn’t match the intensity of the opening half. You have to wonder whether they consciously had to choose between blowing your mind and having that lesser following flip side, or perhaps interspersing the killer tunes between the more average numbers. Personally, I think they made the right decision. Half a relentless classic is better than none.

‘Sweet Leaf’ might have slightly lost its impact after a thousand listens, it being such an upfront song, but it deserves high praise. That huge Neolithic riff, the massive guitar and bass sound, Ozzy confident and in your face, and then that murderous drop with Iommi shredding his guitar while Ward batters the hell out of his drums. This is a huge number and, talking of numbers, probably the greatest and certainly the loudest, love song to the evil weed ever recorded. Mileage may vary as to how much that means to any given listener, but I’m sure it hasn’t hurt the song’s legendary status over the years.

‘After Forever’ steps up the pace. After a semi-psychedelic introduction, a strident riff kicks in, managing to both march and groove at the same time. Geezer’s bass playing is sublime, and the vocals are perfect. This track makes you want to get up and shake your stuff. Bizarrely, the lyrical content was heavily influenced by Butler’s Catholic leanings, and as such, it must be one of the best-selling Christian rock songs of all time.

Next up is the thankfully brief ‘Embryo’, which provides an acceptable acoustic breather before the star turn, ‘Children of the Grave’. The scraggly bass line, the rolling drums, that moment when the guitar kicks in for the epic communal chug… this is vintage Sabbath at its very finest. You may have gathered by now that I love this song, and that includes the ghostly whisperings that bring it to a close.

I don’t think its hyperbolic to suggest that side one forms an integral part of metal’s DNA. Seattle’s grunge scene also owes it a great deal. It’s a veritable blueprint for Doom and Stoner rock. Of course it nothing exists in a vacuum, and it wasn’t even Sabbath’s debut, but this was 1971. This is primal stuff.

On to side 2, or the fifth track, as more digitally inclined citizens of the 21st Century might have it. ‘Orchid’ is a ninety-second acoustic instrumental that, to my mind, serves no purpose. With apologies to the mighty Tony Iommi, it’s not particularly impressive or pleasant, and I just don’t see the point of it. Moving on…

‘Lord of this World’ has a decent riff and an interesting swing to it, but the highlight for me is probably Ozzy’s phased vocals. Overall it is pretty good, but I guess ‘Children of the Grave’ is a hard act for any song to,(almost), follow. I’m sure it has its fans.

Everything gets dialled right back for ‘Solitude’. The distortion disappears from Tony’s guitar, Ozzy is barely recognisable as he warbles gently, and a flute meanders throughout. It’s a lightly atmospheric ballad, which is fine in theory, but this is a throwaway track, lyrically utterly banal and musically bland. At this point in the albu,m something a little different isn’t an entirely bad idea, but this sounds lazy.

‘Into the Void’ is instrumentally sound, featuring a good collection of riffs and breaks, but this time the vocal line falls short. Tony Iommi has joked about how amusing it was to listen to Ozzy attempting to sing it during the recording sessions; there are just too many words in too short a space. It does the song no favours at all, again representing more of a wasted opportunity than a real success.
​
Well, there you have it. Half an essential album followed by half an unexceptional album. This should be in your collection nonetheless. Crank it up and enjoy that first side.

By Andrew Freudenberg

Summer of Black Sabbath: When Horror Bows to Metal

The night the Prince of Darkness departed this realm, the world didn’t just lose a voice, it lost a primal force. Ozzy Osbourne’s passing marked the end of an era forged in the factories of Birmingham, where four working-class alchemists distilled blues into something monstrous, beautiful, and eternal. Black Sabbath didn’t merely play music; they conjured nightmares made sound. Their name, ripped from a 1963 Mario Bava horror film, was a prophecy: I tre volti della paura (The Three Faces of Fear) would birth a fourth face, one that stared unblinking into the abyss.

This summer, as Birmingham draped itself in black for Ozzy’s final bow at Villa Park, a sold-out requiem dubbed Back to the Beginning, the city became a pilgrimage site.

Fans traced the band’s shadow: the demonic tritone echoing at The Crown Pub where Sabbath played their first gig; the mural on Navigation Street immortalising Ozzy’s snarl; the bench on Broad Street Bridge where metal’s architects now sit in steel. Yet beyond the street art and exhibitions, another tribute stirs.

Here, in these pages, horror authors, architects of dread in their own right, dissect Sabbath’s discography. Why? Because Sabbath’s legacy is our legacy. Their riffs were the soundtrack to uncanny tales; their lyrics, incantations for the damned. From the factory-floor doom of “Black Sabbath” (a song born from Geezer Butler’s vision of a hooded figure at his bedside) to the warped fairytale of “Fairies Wear Boots,” they mapped the terrain where horror and metal bleed together.

As Tony Iommi grieved, “There won’t ever be another like him”. So let these reviews be a salute. Let us remember the Prince of Darkness one last time.