Black Sabbath

Sabotage: Super Deluxe Edition BMG

Anger and frustration resulted in their sixth album being their heaviest.

Sabotage is the sound of indignant fury. From the opening battle cry of “Attack!” to the dying embers in a drunken piano coda: a band of brothers fighting back. As guitarist Tony Iommi drily observed: “The aggression definitely came out in the music when we played together. There is some really heavy stuff on that record.”

In part that aggression was a reaction to the relatively subtle Sabbath Bloody Sabbath made two years earlier. Mostly, though, it was driven by the band’s bitter legal battle with management, which had reached the point where lawyers entered the studio to serve writs, sabotaging sessions by forcing the band into court the next day.

If you wind up a band like Sabbath, things get heavy. Witness the riotous opening pair and , separated by the brief flamenco interlude Or the album’s twin epics and – which at one point has Ozzy growling “Suck me!” like Satan himself. Even the lesser tracks – the ballsy boogie ; Ozzy’s hit; and the choral (that served as the band’s intro theme ever after) – top most tracks on subsequent albums.