Sabbath Bloody Sabbath by Black Sabbath

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Black Sabbath's fifth studio album, came out at the end of 1973, and it very nearly didn't come at all. The band tried writing in Los Angeles after the long world tour for Vol. 4, but drugs and exhaustion left them stuck. So they decamped to Clearwell Castle in the Forest of Dean, where Tony Iommi found the monster riff that became the title track, and the block was broken. They produced it themselves at Morgan Studios in London that September.

Ozzy Osbourne wails, Iommi's guitar hits like a steamroller, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward lock into their usual thunder, but there's something new in the air too: synthesizers, strings and keyboards creeping into the dark corners and making the doom sound bigger and stranger than ever. For the first time, critics and fans both came along for the ride, and it went on to become their fifth platinum album in a row in America.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.