“War Pigs” by Black Sabbath

"War Pigs" kicks the door in on Paranoid, Black Sabbath's second album, out on Vertigo in 1970, and it is the most thunderous sermon anybody preached against war that year. It started life as something spookier. Geezer Butler's lyric was first called "Walpurgis", a nod to the Witches' Sabbath, and it cast war itself as the great Satan, lining up the generals beside the witches at a black mass. The record company took one look at that title and decided it smelled too much of brimstone, so the band renamed the song and kept every word Butler had already written.

Britain had done away with national service in 1963, but with Vietnam still raging, young men there worried they could be sent off to fight anyway, and Butler was dreading his own call-up. That fear is what lit the fuse.

Musically it is pure dread made physical. Tony Iommi's guitar drops riffs like shells, Butler's bass doubles every blow, Bill Ward's drums lurch and roll, and Ozzy Osbourne's lead vocal rides above it all like a town crier with terrible news. Rodger Bain produced, with Tom Allom and Brian Humphries engineering, and they had the sense to leave it raw. Before it ever reached vinyl, the band liked to rework the words when they played it live.

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