1974 LP Warner Brothers WS4-1887
1992 CD Castle CA197
1987 CD Warner Brothers 2-3104
1987 CS Warner Brothers M5-3104
1996 CD Castle ESM302
2001 CD Castle 91004
2002 CD Victor 61711
Paranoid was not only Black Sabbath's most popular record (it was a
number one smash in the U.K., and "Paranoid" and "Iron Man" both
scraped the U.S. charts despite virtually nonexistent radio play), it
also stands as one of the greatest and most influential heavy metal
albums of all time. Paranoid refined Black Sabbath's signature sound
— crushingly loud, minor-key dirges loosely based on heavy
blues-rock — and applied it to a newly consistent set of songs
with utterly memorable riffs, most of which now rank as all-time metal
classics. Where the extended, multi-sectioned songs on the debut
sometimes felt like aimless jams, their counterparts on Paranoid have
been given focus and direction, lending an epic drama to now-standards
like "War Pigs" and "Iron Man" (which sports one of the most
immediately identifiable riffs in metal history). The subject matter is
unrelentingly, obsessively dark, covering both supernatural/sci-fi
horrors and the real-life traumas of death, war, nuclear annihilation,
mental illness, drug hallucinations, and narcotic abuse. Yet Sabbath
makes it totally convincing, thanks to the crawling, muddled bleakness
and bad-trip depression evoked so frighteningly well by their music.
Even the qualities that made critics deplore the album (and the group)
for years increase the overall effect — the technical simplicity
of Ozzy Osbourne's vocals and Tony Iommi's lead guitar vocabulary; the
spots when the lyrics sink into melodrama or awkwardness; the lack of
subtlety and the infrequent dynamic contrast. Everything adds up to
more than the sum of its parts, as though the anxieties behind the
music simply demanded that the band achieve catharsis by steamrolling
everything in its path, including its own limitations. Monolithic and
primally powerful, Paranoid defined the sound and style of heavy metal
more than any other record in rock history.
They'd already shown the survivors of the summer of love just how easy
it was to crush pastoral dreams under a slow-moving juggernaut of
sludgy riffs and nightmarish visions, but with this 1970 disc, Black
Sabbath put the icing on the cake -- or is that the lid on the coffin?
Ozzy Osbourne's haunted, disaffected howl has never sounded more
chilling than it does cutting through the thick layers of sonic cement
his bandmates poured into classics like "Iron Man" and the still-creepy
title track. Painted in shades that run the gamut from black to blacker
to blackest -- fully imploding on the number-than-numb "Electric
Funeral" -- Paranoid doesn't offer much in the way of variety. But if
you're looking for sheer sonic sedation -- the old-fashioned kind,
meted out by a sledgehammer-wielding stranger -- you can't do any
better than this.
David Sprague - Barnes
and Noble
Though most of Black Sabbath's classic material from this album ("War
Pigs," "Iron Man," "Fairies Wear Boots," and the title track) can also
be found on the collection We Sold Our Soul for Rock & Roll,
Paranoid is essential for the completist. One of the best albums from
one of the bands to define heavy metal, this album is chock-full of the
best stuff from Sabbath's Osbourne years. (Where else will you be able
to hear "Rat Salad?") The music isn't exactly complex, but it doesn't
need to be; its importance lies in its evocative power, with which any
teenager will be able to identify.
Obwohl das meiste klassische Black Sabbath-Material von diesem Album
("War Pigs", "Iron Man", "Fairies Wear Boots" und der Title Track) auch
auf dem Sampler We Sold Our Souls For Rock & Roll zu finden
ist,
ist Paranoid dennoch für den Sammler unentbehrlich. Als eines der
besten Alben von einer Band, die den Heavy Metal erfand, ist dieses
Album gespickt mit dem Besten aus Sabbaths Osbournejahren (Wo sonst ist
es möglich "Rat Salad" zu hören?). Die Musik ist nicht
unbedingt komplex, aber dies ist auch nicht notwendig; ihre Bedeutung
liegt in ihrer hervorgerufenen Power, mit der sich jeder Teenager
identifizieren kann.
Genevieve Williams - Aus
der Amazon.de-Redaktion
What the Critics Say...
Q Magazine (12/99,
p.170):
Included in Q Magazine's Best Gothic Albums Of All Time - "...[They]
stamped their bombastic and doom-laden imprint on British rock
forever..."
Vibe (12/99,
p.162): Included in Vibe's 100 Essential Albums
of the 20th Century
A young girl's voice. She is dressed in a nun's habit. The boy turns
and faces her. She proffers a chalice of cervical exudate and he drinks
from it. She gets down on her knees and elbows, como peros, and tosses
the nun's hem above her posterior. On each naked buttock is the
scrawled sign of Ashirikas; "Fuck me, Rolf." The boy whips out a 10"
personal vibrator, adorned in waterproof acrylics with the image of the
Nazarene. He intones the words "nuk Khensu tenten nebu" and approaches
her intendant fundament...impletion...across the room the fresh corpse
of an illegitimate hippie baby is dis-impaled from the ceremonial sword
of Baph-omet. The myrrh is extinguished with the collected saliva of
priests listening to tales of carnal abuse in warm, dark confessionals.
The Shadaic numinae are chalked over with the mirrored sign of Ariael,
the eleven rubies returned to the vessel of Dione. A dark, handsome
youth with the physique of a Dionysos–eyes, though, glazed and
cold–grasps the two-foot stem of an imported El-Douhab hookah by
its hilt and shoves its tip, sans mouthpiece, into the dry, collapsed
rectum of the dead hippie baby, pushes until thin rivulets of blood
ooze from the nostrils and lips of the infant. The hookah's stem-tip
surfaces and the suck-piece is restored. Those in the room gather
about. One youth wears a mosaic-inlaid Aztec skull mask, ornamented
with the symbols of Gnostic adoration. He fills the hookah bowl with
black opium tars and a dash of Asthmador powders...in the corner of the
room, clutching a smuggled police photo of Sharon Tate with her
hacked-off tit crammed up her snatch, a lone boy masturbates slowly,
moaning "tempora mutantur et nos muta-mur in illis."
No "flower children" they, the sinister emanation of a generation who
only yesterday, it seems, were set on changing a world in the shadow of
nuclear holocaust and overpopulation into a utopia of peace and love.
They drop the knee of fealty before the Antichrist. They shoot "M" and
they engage in group sex. No act is too depraved, no thought too
bizarre as they plunge deeper and deeper into the realm of perversion,
into the ultimate "trip" of their own self-fashioned Hell. Orgies,
incest, drugs, homosexuality, necrophilia, public nose-picking,
Satanism, even living sacrifice.
And this is their music. Although you may not enjoy its "message,"
although you may not enjoy a lead singer (Kip Treavor), who sounds like
Keith Relf whining about the tampons stuck up his nostrils, you owe it
to yourself as a person concerned with contemporary society or merely
with the artistic underground of the youth movement in general to be
aware of the "heavy" sounds of bubble-gum Satanism and if you see them
live sometimes they undress a hippie girl.
Gen'rals gathered in their masses,
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction,
Sorcerer of death's construction
In the fields the bodies burning,
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind,
Poisoning their brainwashed minds
Oh Lord Yeah!
Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave thier role to the poor, yeah
Time will tell on their power minds,
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess,
Wait 'till their judgement day comes, yeah
Now in darkness world stops turning,
Ashes where the bodies burning
No more War Pigs have the power,
And as God has struck the hour
Day of judgement, God is calling
On their knees the war pigs crawling,
Begging mercies for their sins
Satan, laughing, spreads his wings
Oh Lord Yeah!
PARANOID
Finished with my woman 'cause she couldn't help me with my mind
People think I'm insane because I am frowning all the time
All day long I think of things but nothing seems to satisfy,
Think I'll lose my mind if I don't find something to pacify
Can you help me occupy my brain?
Oh yeah
I need someone to show me the things in life that I can't find,
I can't see the things that make true happiness, I must be blind
Make a joke and I will sigh and you will laugh and I will cry
Happiness I can not feel and love to me is so unreal
And so as you hear these words telling you now of my state
I tell you to enjoy life, I wish I could but (it's/I'm) too late
PLANET CARAVAN
We sail through endless skies,
Stars shine like eyes,
the black night sighs
The moon in silver dreams
falls down in beams,
Light of the night
The earth, a purple blaze
of sapphire haze in orbit always
While down below the trees,
bathed in cool breeze,
Silver starlight breaks down from night
And so we pass on by
the crimson (eye / knife)
of great god Mars
as we travel the universe
IRON MAN
I am Iron Man!
Has he lost his mind?
Can he see or is he blind?
Can he walk at all
Or if he moves will he fall?
Is he 'live or dead?
(Has he / Icy) thoughts with in his head?
We'll just pass him there,
Why should we even care?
He was turned to steel
in the great magnetic field
When he traveled time
for the future of mankind
Nobody wants him;
He just stares at the world,
Planning his vengeance
that he will soon unfurl
Now the time is here
for Iron Man to spread fear,
Vengeance from the grave
kills the people he once saved
Nobody wants him;
They just turn their heads
Nobody helps him
now he has his revenge
Heavy boots of lead
drills his victims full of dread
Running as fast as they can,
Iron Man lives again
ELECTRIC FUNERAL
Reflex in the sky warn you you're gonna die
Storm comin' you better hide from the atomic tide
Flashes in the sky turns houses into sty
Turns people into clay, radiation minds decay
Robot minds of robot slaves lead them to atomic (grave/rage/rate)
Plastic flowers, melting sun, fading moon falls upon
dying world of radiation, victims of (man/mad) frustration,
burning globe of obscene fire, like electric funeral pyre
Buildings crashing down to what's cracking ground
[Rivers turned to wood]**, ice melting to flood
Earth lies in death bed, clouds cry for the dead
Terrifying rain, ease a burning pain
'lectric Fun'ral
'lectric Fun'ral
'lectric Fun'ral
Electric Fun'ral
And so in the sky shines the electric eye
Supernat'ral king, takes earth under his wing
Heaven's golden chorus sings, Hell's angels flap their wings
Evil souls fall to Hell, ever trapped in burning cell
HAND OF DOOM
What you you gonna do,
Time's caught up with you
Now you wait your turn,
You know there's no return
Take your written rules,
You join the other fools
Turn to something new,
Now it's killing you
First it was the bomb,
Vietnam napalm,
Disillusioning,
You push the needle in
From life you escape,
Reality(')s that (way/fade)
Colors in your mind satisfy in time
Oh you you know you must be blind,
To do such things like this,
To take the sleep that you don't know
You're giving Death a kiss
Poor little fool now
Your mind is full of pleasure,
Your BODY's looking ill
To you it's shallow leisure,
So drop the acid pill
Don't stop to think now
You're having a good time baby,
But that won't last,
Your mind's all full of things,
You're living too fast,
Go out enjoy yourself,
Don't bar it in
You need someone to help you
stick the needle in, yeah
Now you know the scene,
Your skin starts turnin' green
Your eyes no longer see life's reality
Push the needle in,
Face Death's sickly grin
Holes are in your skin,
Caused by deadly pin
Head starts spinning 'round,
You fall down to the ground
Feel your body heave,
Death's hand starts to weave
It's too late to turn,
You Don't want to learn
Price of life you hide,
Now You're gonna die
RAT SALAD
(Instrumental)
FAIRIES WEAR BOOTS
Goin' home late last night,
Suddenly I got a fright
Yeah, I looked through a window and surprise what I saw:
Fairy boots are dancin' with a dwarf
All Right Now!
Yeah Fairies wear boots, and you gotta believe me
Yeah, I saw it, I saw it I tell you no lies
Yeah Fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me
I saw it I saw it with my own two eyes
Woah Right Now!
Yeah Fairies wear boots, and you gotta believe me
Yeah, I saw it, I saw it I tell you no lies
Yeah Fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me
I saw it I saw it with my own two eyes
Alright Now!
So I went to the doctor, see what he could give me
He said, "Son, son you've gone too far,
" 'Cos smokin' an trippin' is all that you do." Yeah