0416. Black Sabbath
Paranoid

September 1970. The drizzle and rain of England suddenly got a whole lot heavier. Black Sabbath released their second album just six months after their eponymous debut, and with it scored their only number one spot on their native album chart.

Okay, so we've had a couple of metal sounding oldies before, but Sabbath is where it got real. No more heavy metal-ish music paired with pop-lyrics, but from the opening, eight minute long, War Pigs (notably covered on one of the Got To Gets it's straight into the void.

The only kind-of-weak track is Planet Caravan. Not cause it's a ballad, but cause of the effects laid on Ozzy's vocals and Iommi's guitar. The rest, though, are keepers all the way. The title track with it's relatively simple, but oh, so effective riff, Iron Man and it's groaning metal hinges.
But the track that beats'em all is Hand Of Doom, the slow narrative of a serviceman's impending death by self medicating heroin to ease the PTSD of war.

Paranoid is an album about war, insanity and addiction. It's also one of the albums you've Got To Get if you don't already own it. (And even if you hate metal. It's a cultural milestone.)