Customer Reviews

Black Sabbath 4

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4 star:		(3)
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I've read many controversials about this record, most of them saying that this is a sabbath's uneven record. The very first thing that comes to mind when you think about Sabbath's vol.4 is experimentalism. So far, a heavy metal band, Sabbath decided to sound a little more expansive. I can certainly point a psychedelic influence in the whole album atmosphere, not only the riffs but also the lyrics without devil rubish. The album is melancholic sometimes, but also happy, it floats like that, sounding refreshing, younger and reckless.

It's a turning point from heavy metal to mid seventies hard rock sound the band would further develop.

If you listen to this as a hard rock record from the beginning of the 70's then you get the spirit, I mean it's anacronical listening to this only as metal record. They had already created their own style and begun, from this point to diversify, and of course th influences will be everything that was going on around during that time. So you can hear the start of a compostion process that will be further developed on "Sabbath bloody sabbath", and yet you may recognize the typical Sabbath heavy riff from the previous records on "Cornucopia" and "Under the sun".

after all said and done, let's see the tunes here.

Wheel of confusion - marvelous opening track. Perfect example of what is yet to come through the intire album. Melancolic, heavy, fast and slow, reflective. yes it's a new Black Sabbath 10/10

Tomorrows dream - great song, great riff short and sharp. Perfect for a single release. The cowbell always helps - 10/10

Changes - sorry, but for me is boring, not much for the synthetizers simulating a string session, but Ozzy's voice is over here. - 5/10

Fx - overexposure to psychotropics. - 5/10

Supernaut - Here's another example of a new Black Sabbath spirit, the song has a very groove feeling, with lots of percussion, maybe one oft he best Bill Ward's work on Sabbath during the 70's. A high time upbeat song hard to find on Sabbath's records. - 9/10

Snowblind - Amazing hard/psychedelic track, the major hit of the album along with "Changes" and "Tomorrows dream". Despite the fact that the subject is quite sad (cocaine addiction), the song is very beautiful. - 10/10

Cornucopia - the song opens with a dark riff like the previous records and develops onto a psychodelic track with nice lyrics and a groove part in the middle. simply astonishing - 9/10

Laguna Sunrise - It's clearly a derivative of the instrumental parts on "Master of reality" and a prepararion for "Fluff" on the next record. It's OK but repetitive. - 6/10

St. Vitus dance - Wierd song with Ozzy giving love advices!!!. Anyway, i like it a lot. - 8/10

Under the sun - Another gloomy riff and then things go lisergic and then goes a short track inside speeding up everything and then back to heavy/psychedelia until the increasing slowing dynamic that close the record. 8/10

I still have my vol. 4 cover t-shirt, and i still get some good thrills listening to this. Certainly one of the 20 itens to take with you to that famous desert island.

Vol. 4 (1972.), Black Sabbath's fourth studio album

'Volume 4', Black Sabbath's fourth studio album, released in 1972 marked the beginning of a transitional period for the band. Black Sabbath were pretty much unique with their sound in the early 1970's; the godfathers of heavy metal were louder than most and had a distinctive sound which no other band really came near to having a similarity to. However, after producing three albums ('Black Sabbath', 'Paranoid' and 'Master of Reality') with their classic, straight out heavy and powerful style, Black Sabbath decided to start to diversify and add some different styles to their music. 'Volume 4' was the end result and Black Sabbath certainly did not let any of their fans down with their diverse style on this album!

Very simply, 'Volume 4' brings the house down from start to finish. I find this Black Sabbath album to be a particularly great listen every time I play it because, as I have already pointed out, it has so much to offer. It has the riff-packed, heavy rocker styled tracks that we all know Black Sabbath for, whilst throwing in some different effects. There's tracks with guitar experimentation and also some lighter, but still very powerful songs. I also find with this album that, certainly in the case of the heavier tracks, there is great consistency throughout the album. Some of these are top draw rock songs, with some mean guitar riffs. Toni Iommi shows again why he is a guitar legend - jamming out some classic solos, such as on 'Snowblind'. Ozzy Osbourne puts his mark on the tracks in classic fashion - especially on the piano driven 'Changes' track - not bad seen as he was just recovering from severe laryngitis whilst making this album!

The remaster for 'Volume 4' is pretty solidly done, as is true for practically all of the Sabbath remasters. The 10 songs on the album have been remastered very well, however sadly no rarities or extra tracks have been added to exemplify this pretty creative period for the band. The inner booklet you get is very much like the LP original, which displayed various pictures of the band in concert, aswell as the song lyrics. However it also does contain some info. about the making of the album and Sabbath's touring activities at the time.

There's nothing weak about this album, the songs range from good to doubly excellent. 'Wheels of Confusion' starts the album off in great rocking fashion. This 8 minute epic is packed with great riffs and excellent vocals. It build to a great climax with an excellent outro. the end part of the track is often called 'The Straightener'. 'Tomorrow's Dream' follows were the first track left off in great style. Next up is 'Changes' which is were we begin to see a break from the Sabbath norm. Here its just Ozzy, a piano and a mellotron - its a great change of pace on the album and its title sums up the developing style of the band. 'FX' is an interesting follow up - 2 minutes of experimenting on the guitar ... i think, with various cracking and tapping noises - nothing amazing but I definitely admire the idea to experiment! Then we return to the classic matal sound of Iommi's guitar with 'Supernaut' and this is followed up by 'Snowblind', a real classic with a real atmospheric style. 'Cornucopia' is more downbeat and 'Laguna Surprise' is another change of style. Its softer, with acoustic guitar styles - its pretty hypnotic when you listen to it. 'St. Vitus Dance' and 'Under the Sun' rock out the album, the latter is truly excellent. Some of the riffs are like something you'd hear from a punk band except .... punk hadn't arrived yet so it just shows you how ahead of their time and influential Sabbath were!

Black Sabbath's Volume 4 is a refreshing and captivating effort. Personally I would say it just lacks that killer factor that other Sabbath albums have but nevertheless its a great album and it is great to see the band experimenting and trying out different styles because lets face it, all the great bands have that ability to change and never make their music have a replicated feel to it! I would recommend 'Volume 4' to any Sabbath fan or to any fan of heavy metal in general.

Being overlooked by the fans most of the time (because of its name maybe?!), Volume IV definitely stands among the strongest albums of Black Sabbath. I also perceive it as the last album of their "childhood" period. The next work they would do "Sabbath bloody sabbath" is definitely Sabbath on the next level. Partly due to that fact, the album is quite cherished... Once again, Ozzy delves into the gloomy side, speaks about sorrow, loss and darkness. While lacking the overall completeness (Which would most definitely be present on their subsequent works), I give this album 5 stars, because the songs are as always incredible.

This was a heavy album when it came out. Less blues based and more thudding like alot of what came later. I don't think this one was as panned as sabbatage was or even what came after that was. It has great metal songs on it and still stands as a great example of what metal should be melodic and well written and sung. Although this one is the most thudding of all sabbaths discs to be sure. Supernaut sounds like jet engines pumping sound out of their tails to me. That massive thud would lead to other types of metal later too. I don't think there is a bad song on this one and this remaster has the better sound of any release out there.

Black Sabbath, like the Beatles and Devo, was one of the few bands I liked when I was a little kid, before I actually got into music. I didn't have direct access to any of their records, but I did have a neighborhood buddy whose older brother would often torture us by locking us in his pitch dark bedroom with either of the first two Sabbath albums playing at full blast. This was terrifying at first, but after a while I developed a taste for it. Years later when I dove head first into music, at first it was Devo and new wave, and then I quickly moved on to punk and hardcore, which of course lead to thrash. Around the time I was in college, I began broadening my musical horizons a tad, and that was what lead me back to Sabbath. I started buying their albums chronologically, and I remember that when it was time for me to pick up 'Vol. 4', the record store clerk warned me "You might not like this one, it's pretty weird. It's kinda their weirdest record. It's not like the first three." I'd heard other people say similar things about it, and I still do once in a while. I've never understood what the hell these people are on about. Is Vol. 4 identical to the first three records? No. (As if the the first three records are identical to each other in the first place...) It does have bits of experimentation here and there. (As if Master of Reality's tracks Orchid and Embryo weren't weird and experimental...) Overall, relative to the big picture of Sabbath's entire body of work, I think it's more similar to the first three records than it is different. It showcases Iommi's classic sludgey guitar sound and a lot of typically simple, heavy, catchy riffs. The occasional experimentation doesn't even come close to outweighing these elements. Maybe when it was released in 1972 and there was nothing to compare it to other than the previous albums, it was more shocking and developed a reputation for being "a weird album" and that reputation carries on. But if you listen to all of Sabbath's records in chronological order, I think it's obvious that Vol. 4 fits right in there next to the first three albums. Its follow-up 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath', to me that was the first truly "weird" Sabbath album that took a sharp left turn away from the early sound. (Which is not to say it's not an amazingly great album... it most definitely is that.)

All of that aside, this is one of my favorite Sabbath albums. If I named all of the songs on it that I love, it would practically be the entire track list. Supernaut is the absolute cream of the crop. One of the best songs of their entire career.

the item,cd black sabbath vol4; remastered, was everything it was advertised to be: original packaging, contents, sound quality excellent for an lp first released in 1972.

The sound on "Wheels of Confusion" takes a dip on the right channel at 4:52. How could the people who remaster this album miss that error. Also, I noticed "Snowblind" is quieter in the beginning but in my Greatest Hits 2006 version of that song, it sounds excellent. I would not buy this version of the album if I were you

I'm not the greatest Black Sabbath fan but listening to this album I get that they had a sound that was very much their own and that had a major impact in a lot of the heavy music that was to come. From Metallica to Nirvana or Smashing Pumpkins, the Sabbath' wall of distortion is there. I would go as far as to say that they might not be as brilliant as Led Zeppelin but, in a way, they were more important. Black Sabbath is most of all a sound experience.

More than Ozzy's unmistakable siren vocals, it was Tony Iommi roaring riffs that became the watermark for Sabbath music. And this album is a riff-festival. Each of the hard rocking songs has at least a couple of memorable riffs in it. However monolithic their music was, in this album the songs keep changing, riff after riff, and the second verse is never the same as the first one (check out "Tomorrow's Dream" or "Snowblind").

"Supernaut" is the best track. Great riff, monstrous sound, funky-crushing rhythm. This one really blows out of the speakers.

Then there are a couple of odd ones. "Changes" is very boring but "Laguna Sunrise" is a beautiful acoustic instrumental. "FX" is, well... fx.

All in all, if you like heavy rock with mind-blowing riffage, buy this album. At least you will learn where it comes from.

This is the album from the Ozzy era that tends to get panned the most. The reason? Coming off the heels of three superb bluesy and heavy classics, this album expanded their range a bit. This has some mellotron, some piano, and some weird sound effects that normally are found on King Crimson albums. Does that mean that this album is bad? Nowhere near it.

1. Wheels of Confusion-5/5. This one is a great choice for an opener. The first thing that strikes you is that the production has a more psychedelic feel to it. The lyrics are excellent and the music alternates between slow and heavy to create an excellent track.

2. Tomorrow's Dream-5/5. Not quite as heavy as most of the other songs from this era, this is still an excellent rocker with some great guitar playing and a flawless vocal from Ozzy.

3. Changes-5/5. This is the song that most fans hate, but I happen to love it. It consists of Ozzy, a piano and a mellotron. The music is beautiful and Ozzy's vocals are very emotive. Excellent.

4. FX-2/5. Pointless sound experiment. A sound collage that is absolutely unnecessary with no redeeming qualities at all.

5. Supernaut-5/5. An upbeat, heavy rocker with a very psychedelic feel to it. The lyrics are especially strange, but the vocals are excellent.

6. Snowblind-5/5. Probably the best song on here. The lyrics are about the dangers of using cocaine. The vocals are flawless and the music is very well written and performed. An excellent mid-tempo rocker.

7. Cornucopia-4/5. The emphasis on the song is heavy guitar. That is the thing that sticks out the most. The vocals aren't particularly good and I can't really understand what is being sung, but the music is still very cool.

8. Laguna Sunrise-5/5. An absolutely beautiful acoustic guitar instrumental. Very atmsospheric.

9. St Vitus' Dance-3/5. Not bad. A heavy midtempo rocker with a repetitive fast guitar riff that gets a bit annoying. Vocals and lyrics are simply average.

10. Every Day Comes and Goes-5/5. An excellent closing song with one of the coolest riffs ever as the song fades out. Great lyrics and vocals from Ozzy.

Yes, this album is quite a bit different than the three that preceded it, but its not so far out of left field that it is without its merits. I personally think it is an excellent album, but its not a good starting point. Highly recommended for fans.

I love this one. Snowblind, Supernaut, & Wheels of Confusion are top-shelf BS tunes. I rate it behind Paranoid & their debut album, but it's definitely better than Master of Reality. I bought this one as a 10 year old back in 1973, and still crank it up in my car (my wife doesn't appreciate it on the home unit).