Yea you can't mess with Sabbath.. if there was no Sabbath, heavy metal would never have existed, or rather, it would have been very different.
I like Heaven and hell and Mob rules is ok too, but I love the first five albums. These albums make it probably my absolute favourite band, after Sabotage it's nothing special to me really. Heaven and hell has some good hard rock stuff on it, and I love Holy diver and the Rainbow albums with Dio as well. But yeah, nothing beats the early Black Sabbath.
ALL of Black Sabbaths albums are masterpeices for me. The Tony Martin era is just fucking awesome. Tony Martin has one of the best voices technically. The line ups for these times though weren't good. Hardly anyone who was on an album one time wasn't there for the next except the guitarist (who is the only original member who never left(unless you include the time he left to join Jethro Tull in the early 70s before Sabbath got big) and the singer. Tony Martin was in the band longer than any other singer except Ozzy. Dios Sabbath material is really good too. Dehumanizer is my favorite. It's really doomy almost like their early days. A little heavier though. Mob Rules and Heaven and Hell are awesome albums too. My favorite is Ozzys era though. I guess it has something with them being young and angry still. ALL their albums were very good during the time for me. Technical Esctasy and Never Say Die were really good even if they didn't sell worth shit compared to their others.
Yeah I love black sabbath. I have their Master of Reality and their We Sold Our Soul for Rock and Roll albums. Very good shit. The Wizard is probably my favorite song by them. One of my favorite bands of all time.
I have a great affinity with Sabbath... Definitely one of my favourite bands... I just love the vibe. They took the blues rock of the time, slowed it down, turned it way up and added copious amounts of sludgy riffage to create one unholy soup!
Sabbath might be the greatest band of all time. IMO way better than any zeppelins or floyds, or any of todays bands, these guys were fucking evil, and their music is sooo good, so inspirational, so fun. Best vocalist - ozzy or dio, for sure.
I love some sabbath, and it really doesnt matter what era it is! My fave sabbath is the one with Ian Gillan - born again. I also really like the early ozzy stuff, and dio as well. Tony Martin had his moments, and I dont mind some of the later stuff. For the Ozzy albums, its hard to pick a fave, Sabotage, Bloody Sabbath, and the first album are ones I have always loved. The Dio tunes are good, Mob Rules and Neon Knights kinda stuff always kills me! I had the chance to see sabbath on the dehumanizer tour, and meet them. A great batch of guys - I learned that Tony is very short and Terry doesnt answer to Geezer as much as one would suspect. I had seen ozzy and dio do solo shows, but never caught Sabbath, so it was great to finally see the band. As for Tony Iommi in Jethro Tull, as I understand it he did one gig or so with them. However that one gig was filmed, and released as The Rolling Stones RockNRoll Circus. Tull does one tune, Song for Jefferey, with Tony on guitar and his hat pulled way down over his face. Its a neat version of the Tull classic, and I learned to play it from watching this vid! Its a great vid for all sorts of other reasons, the jam session with jack bruce, john lennon, and mitch mitchell has some great moments (until yoko opens her mouth!). This is the famous "garden party" mentioned in the rickey nelson song, and is a freaky event that somehow included Black Sabbaths future guitarist - just a very short time before Brian Jones death. Also you sabbath fans may notice some similarities on these album covers!
Zeppelin > Sabbath, but they're actually quite incomparable, a very different style. Still, I like Sabbath, and due to Asmodean's frequent whorings of Master of reality () that's exactly the album I'm listening to right now.
Alright, I'll explain my opinion.. I feel Black Sabbath are better than Zeppelin, why? well, as jimmy pointed out, they're more suited to my taste for music. They gave birth to a sound that brought forth a wave of bands of which I greatly appreciate. I am comparing them on the grounds of creativity, power and influence. You would be very, very hard pressed to find a band who sounded like Black Sabbath in their early days. If you're looking for a zep' soundalike, try vanilla fudge, for example. Power, or "how heavy they are"... Sabbath definitely take the win here (ref: self titled [black sabbath] or Iron Man) I'd say zep's best offerings in this would be immigrant song or the ocean, maybe heartbreaker, but still, not close. Influence. As a whole, Led Zeppelin has quite possibly been more influencial, but in the metal genre, where it counts, there's no question, Sabbath are the godfathers of the entire genre. I love Led Zeppelin, no question, but to me, Black Sabbath is where it's at, c'mon, they sold their souls for rock 'n' roll! \m/
I don't see the point of even comparing Zeppelin and Sabbath... They were two very talented, but equally different shaped... Potatos.
Yeah, it al depends on personal taste. That's why the whole worst band topic is rather pathetic in my opinion. It doesn't matter how much reason you put in it, you never get everyone on one line. Black Sabbath's music suits my mind like no other band does and also the fact that they're the most important influence to a lot of other bands I like very much (not the metalgenre by the way) plays a role in they being my fav band.
I don't love either zep or sabbath, but there is no way I'd class sabbath as "better". Musicianship wise, zep. In regards to influence, sabbath basically did create a genre in some ways, but zep had more of a wider influence and not just musically. And sabbath look very one-trick pony compared to zep, which means that bands never really sound like zep, they may sound like one of zep's sounds but not all of them. There are thousands od sabbath sound alike bands, almost the whole of that sludge southern rock scene is sabbath-esque riffs, but with blokes shouting over it as opposed to ozzy's bad singing. But as not a great fan of either, I don't care that much!
