BLACK SABBATH 'SABBATH BLOODY SABBATH' LP (50th Anniversary, Smoky Vinyl)

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath marked Black Sabbath’s fifth album in just over three years, and the grueling turnaround was starting to wear on metal’s founding fathers during its making. Guitarist Tony Iommi admitted he was experiencing writer’s block at the time, but turned things around with the slow-thud sludging that drives the title track, one of Sabbath’s most menacing musical moments ever. The rest of the album delivers weed-and-wah-wah-infused doom blues, palatial acoustic psychedelia and black majick boogies, making Sabbath Bloody Sabbath one of the band’s most whimsically divine outings of their first era.