On the 22nd July 2025, we lost Ozzy Osbourne.
At just 75 years old, the Prince of Darkness himself finally passed away.
After an incredible career fronting the band that created heavy metal (Once they had a suitable name), taking enough drugs that he was medically studied to see how he was still alive, Ozzy finally passed away just weeks after finishing his final tour, Back To the Beginning (which raised over £140 million for charity).
The world of heavy metal (and the world in general) is worse to have lost him.
So I’m going to remember him in the best way I know how: by listening to my favourite Black Sabbath album: Paranoid
Paranoid
This was one of the first albums I remember listening to, which I got around the same time I got Motorheads ‘No Sleep Till Hammersmith’.
You could say these two albums helped set my music tastes for the rest of my life.
Whilst ‘No Sleep…’ is a fast and loud live show that blasts you with amazing riffs and the roar of the crowd, Paranoid offered a different experience.
Paranoid is a complicated album, experimenting with what heavy metal was, wildly leaping between sub-genres between songs; subgenres that had barely been invented at this point.
Paranoid is a dark album, covering very difficult topics like war, addiction and mental health issues. But at the same time the music is so beautiful, even for heavy metal.
What makes it even more impressive is that Paranoid came out less than a year after their debut, Black Sabbath.
And yet even with what must have been a rushed schedule, they created a masterpiece.
Paranoid is a no-skip album for me, and I used to listen to it over and over again.
So let me gush about how every song on this album is amazing and fantastic. Hell, it’s only 8 songs!
War Pigs
Opening the album with a very slow bass-y song about war and the politicians who send others off to their deaths really sets the tone for the album brilliantly.
Basically the entire album is themed around the Vietnam war: the merciless destruction and death, and the effects that had on the soldiers who were there.
It’s so impressive that the opening riff of War Pigs does so much with so little.
The bass, guitar and drums each doing their own thing slowly, just comes together to be more than the sum of their parts.
And then the siren wail feeding in, it gives the sense of dread and emergency without hurting the vibes of the song.
And the little drum riff after that builds up the tension so masterfully.
I always used to try and drum along with the little hi-hat segment and see if I could remember when the extra little bit came in.
So I already mentioned that the album came out quickly. It was so quick in fact that this song was reportedly created in about two hours. An absolute rush job, but still somehow came together so well and became an absolute classic!
Paranoid
After War Pigs, we have Paranoid.
It’s a much faster (though not more upbeat) and more intricate song. The riff is probably the most memorable moment on the entire album.
As a kid, any time I saw a friend playing guitar, I would ask them to play Paranoid, and the riff never failed to impress me.
Paranoid is also a significantly shorter song, only about 1/3 of the length of War Pigs.
Its clearly the single of the album, and you can see why it was such a breakout hit: Its so catchy and accessible for the average person, whilst still being unmistakably metal.
By the way, did you know that The Dickies did a fast version of Paranoid?
Planet Caravan
After the very slow depressing energy of War Pigs and the fast (but depressing) Paranoid, Planet Caravan is entirely different again.
It’s a slow, dreamy song; something that you wouldn’t even recognise as Black Sabbath if you heard it on its own.
It has bongos in it for gods sake!
Apparently the lyrics are about flying through space with your loved one but I’ll be honest, I could never understand the lyrics as a kid.
I just heard this chilled out floaty song that was a nice change of pace from the rest of the album. A beather before it gets all heavy and sad again.
I’ll bet this is the best song on the album to listen to whilst high though…
Iron Man
All anybody ever mentions about this song is its connection to the Marvel superhero, and wonders why it wasn’t included in the films soundtrack (Fine it’s in the end credits, but that doesnt count!)
Its because the song has nothing to do with him!
Iron Man is a very cool story about a guy who travels to the end of time and sees the destruction of the earth. He then travels back to warn people, but is turned to steel in the process.
No-one tries to help him, so he grows resentful and angry at the human race, and eventually rises up to desroy the earth, fulfilling the future he saw.
Its a plot worthy of a Twilight Zone episode, frankly.
The song itself is pretty simple: after that electrifying opening, its basically just a backing beat to Ozzy’s lyrics.
The thing is though that I love his vocals and the story so much that I really don’t mind that there isn’t much else to the song.
Electric Funeral
Rather than the low-tuned bass-y sounds, this song has a very warped and twangy guitar sound, that again is very different from the rest of the album.
Again I never listened to the lyrics as a kid, as they are slightly quieter and the guitars are higher. I always understood it was about decay, destruction and death though.
Reading the lyrics now as an adult, the song is about the nuclear apocalypse, which yeah, is fittingly depressing for the album as a whole.
After the very reverb-laden guitar, there is then a short little breakdown before the next verse is such a fun bright spot as the songs kicks it up a gear.
It’s probably my least favourite song on the album, but that doesn’t mean I dislike it.
Its like saying which if your least flavour of ice cream: chocolate, double chocolate or triple chocolate.
Hand of Doom
When I first heard this song as an impressionable 10-year-old, Hand of Doom, with its ultra slow, mega bass-y song, it was like nothing I had heard before.
The first half of this song is essentially doom metal, a different genre of metal that is slow, uses down-tuned guitars and with exceptionally despairingly sad lyrics.
I love doom metal a lot, and its all thanks for this song.
The way the song slowly builds up, the repetitive bass riff, and the horribly sad lyrics about heroin addiction, and then bursting into a faster song later on – everything about this song is so good.
To think that some people actually thought this song was somehow glorifying drug use!
Its a devastating takedown of how heroin addiction takes hold and destroys lives.
Rat Salad
The only instrumental on the album and you have to work hard to make an instrumental interesting (for me at least)
But boy do they pull it off!
More brilliant riffs and some frenetic drumming makes for 2 and a half minutes of a great listen.
Apparently it began life literally as just a way to fill time on insanely long sets, but then became this full song.
To be fair it helps that i will listen to any amount of a drum solo for any band.
Fairies Wear Boots
And the album ends on the most psychedelic song of the lot, Fairies Wear Boots.
The song is sort of just about everyone telling the protagonist that he’s doing drugs too much, while he can’t stop having hallucinations.
Which makes sense, as Ozzy did a LOT of drugs, and as they say: write what you know.
Although apparently the song and title is about a group of skinheads having issues with the band. So the song is the band insulting the skinheads, calling them fairies, a slur for a homosexual person.
I never actually realised that until research it for this blog however, so I’m going to say it’s all a hallucination, and is actually about magical fairies wearing boots, and ignore the blatant homophobia.
The song feels the most like a jam session with the group that ended up being recorded. It has this flow that feels almost improvisational and it is such a grooving track to listen to.
Wrap Up
Paranoid is the crowning achievement of Black Sabbath for me. The band had just invented heavy metal and they weren’t done exploring new wounds and genres. Basically every song on the album is exploring what we would now see as a different sub-genre of heavy metal.
Nothing I’ve said in this post is exactly shocking or new. Paranoid is frequently voted as one of the most influential and best heavy metal albums of all time.
Louder Than Sound did a list of the top 40 black sabbath songs of all time, and every single one from this album is there, and within the top 29.
This post was just my excuse to talk about my experience with it and just why I love it so much and how it shaped my tastes in music since hearing it as a kid.
So thanks for reading it, and thanks for the music, Ozzy.